The Twisted Cross
by James Jago
Summary: Sequel to The Silver Bird: "Whatever form this Social Democratic Republic of Narnia or whatever is supposed to take," I remarked to Will. "Neo-Nazis don't feature anywhere in the gameplan, of that I am certain!"
1. Prologue

For those who are just joining us: The following is a continuation of my fanfic The Silver Bird. In summary, Dr Malone develops a means of travelling between worlds. Aided and abetted by a guy John Parry once rescued from almost certain death, a navy pilot by the name of David Marshall, she designs an aircraft to carry the Malone Dimensional Transition Drive: the Aurora Borealis. The first time they test this remarkable aircraft, our intrepid explorers -Will, Mary, Elaine Parry and Dave- are chased through Oxford by armed police [it practically goes without saying that they bump into Lyra along the way], cause a train wreck and get mixed up in an all-out war against the Magisterium. There is also a brief reapearance by Asriel, though the question of how he survived the abyss is neatly sidestepped by the author when he gets shot within three paragraphs of turning up.  
  
We resume our tale some ten years post facto, with our heroes about to be plunged into their most desperate battle yeat...  
  
"Your stepfather has a weirder imagination than my dad!" Flight Lt Jack McAllister laughed. His colleague, 'Mark Ransom', smiled faintly to himself. //If only you knew, Jack...//  
  
"That's saying something," he said aloud. Jack was the son of the well-known science fiction/thriller/comedy writer Adam Samson, whose offbeat, cynical sense of humour was quite popular in certain circles. He claimed that the major influences on his style were Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Robert Rankin.  
  
Jack exited Internet Explorer and shut down the Quick Reaction Alert messroom's only PC. "Knows his aircraft tech, though. Those diagrams look so convincing you could practically build the plane. He's ex-Fleet Air Arm too, so I suppose he should." 'Mark' smiled faintly again. "I'm not so sure about the parallel universe stuff though; it sounds a bit Isaac Asimov meets Gene Rodenberry, really."  
  
"Yeah, that it does." //Even after I've seen it work, I might add, but I won't because the weather around Broadmoor at this time of year isn't very good.//  
  
'Mark' headed for the coffee machine, and poured his third cup in as many hours. Sitting around waiting for enemy forces to attack you was dull enough in wartime -he'd done quite a lot of it during Argentina's second shot at retaking the Falkland islands- but in peacetime it was soul-rendingly, nut-crushingly boring beyond the limits of the English language to express; even Welsh probably didn't have a good enough word. Boredom encouraged sleep, and he wasn't allowed to do that until he was relieved in another three hours.  
  
There were two crews each for three aircraft, working in six-on, six-off shifts on QRA, on a rota system. Of the four squadrons of fighters embarked on the nuclear carrier HMS Cunningham, only one was of F35 Joint Strike Fighters. Britain's version was two-seat rather than single for reasons that MoD no doubt felt good, and were qualified for some surface attack weapons, but were mostly used for the air defence of the carrier itself. The remaining three squadrons operated the Sea Typhoon, the naval version of the Eurofighter. The F22 proved to be too expensive to purchase in large quantities, so the Eurofighter was adapted to the task of all purpose carrier-borne fighter. It worked fine, with JSFs equipped with long-range missiles acting as distant cover whilst the Typhoons engaged surface targets, and doing a more than adequate job of dispatching any hostile aircraft the JSFs had missed. Only one Typhoon, armed mostly with anti-radar and other air to surface weaponry, was considered necessary for QRA.  
  
The Typhoon's pilot was sitting on the other side of the room, reading a paperback romance; boredom will do that to a person. 'Elisabeth Silverton' was a well-regarded pilot, with eight sorties and three aerial kills to her name. Mark and she were generally considered the best two pilots in the group. That they were romantically linked was an open secret (officially such things are dead against the rules), and it was rumoured that the captain was keen for it to continue; "Think what a pilot their combined genes ould produce!" he had allegedly remarked.  
  
'Mark' ran a hand through his dark brown hair, and reflected that it needed cutting. He'd been holding off until they were next in port -he'd had some bad experiences with the rating detailed to act as the ship's barber- but sooner or later the new and rather keen XO would notice and lecture him about it, even though the officious little tit knew perfectly well that the whole ship laughed at him behind his back every time he did.  
  
'Lizzie' never had that problem, he thought to himself. The XO was usually too busy looking at her cleavage to notice her hairstyle. //Well, Lt. Commander Thompson, all you can do is look. I get to be with the witty, intelligent woman you don't realise that Lyra is- not to mention the sex!//  
  
'Lizzie' put down the book in frustration. "I picked it up out of desperation because I was bored, but I'm still bored after I've read the first three chapters," she complained.  
  
"Yeah," 'Mark' admitted. "I'd watch one of Dave's Airwolf videos right now!"  
  
"Come on, it's not THAT bad," Jack replied. "Hey! Leave the bloody coffee alone, will you? Much more and you won't need a bloody plane to get off the ground if the alert goes off. It's not healthy, mate."  
  
"Hasn't killed me yet," 'Mark' snorted, but he left the machine alone. His bladder wasn't up to it, anyway.  
  
He glared at Jack when he himself got one. "Hypocrite."  
  
"I've had two cups of coffee in the last twenty four hours, you've had about twelve. Moderation in all things, that's the way!"  
  
The remaining two flight crew wandered in from the small kitchenette (or is it galleyette at sea?), where they had been making sandwiches. Mitch Dawson was a tall, heavyset black man with the build of a rugby player. He was patient, thoughtful and taciturn, which along with his build led some people to think that he was a bit slow. Right up until he did better than all other viewers and most of the contestants on University Challenge from his armchair, that is. Carrie-Ann Hobson was Welsh, with flame-red hair and a matching temper. Jack had been trying without success to get off with her for some time now.  
  
'Mark' bit into his rather lacklustre cheese roll without great enthusiasm; they'd run out of Branston again, and he was heartily sick of the selection of possible sandwich fillings on offer in any case. He was almost glad of the sudden distraction offered by a sudden booming explosion and a clattering sound, as of hundreds of pieces of metal hitting the sides of the ship. It was a sond with which he had become intimately familiar in the South Atlantic. Something quite large had just exploded outside.  
  
"What in God's name-?" Jack tailed off as the tannoy sounded.  
  
"All hands man your battle stations, all hands man your battle stations!" They stared at each other in horror.  
  
"Let's go!" 'Mark' yelled, snapping out of it. Grabbing their helmets and frantically struggling into open-water survival suits, they made for the stairs to the flight deck.  
  
The JSFs were parked close to the superstructure, with a single Typhoon nearby. They pelted for them. 'Mark's' plane captain checked that they were secure, and began closing the canopy. "What's going on?" Mitch asked him. The man simply shrugged helplessly.  
  
"Christ knows!" he replied.  
  
"All QRA aircraft, immediate launch!" the controller ordered. 'Mark' throttled up and swivelled the engine nozzle downwards, and the small fighter rose like a kestrel on a thermal. He glanced over to the launch catapault, wincing as the huge Typhoon was flung into the air. It dipped below the flight deck but came up, wobbling in a way that still made him nervous. //I'll never get used to that, never!//  
  
"Okay," he said to himself. "Does anybody see what just blew up one of our escorts?"  
  
"I've got a visual on a dozen or so aircraft, no IFF squack but their markings say they're land-based Typhoons. Wait a second..." Jack broke off as alarms began to go off in all three cockpits. "Jesus Christ, they just lit us up. They're firing on us!"  
  
All three aircraft zigzagged wildly, narrowly avoiding the missiles. "Inter-service rivalry is REALLY geting out of hand, don't you think, skipper?"  
  
"Not funny, Jack!" 'Mark' replied. He ducked as another missile hit the carrier amidships, sending a tremendous sheet of flame skywards. Debris pinged off his canopy.  
  
"Here they come!" 'Lizzie' yelled. The two JSF pilots swung around to engage. The Typhoon soon joined them.  
  
It's hard to describe the next few seconds for Lyra and Will. Pilot and machine were as one, instinct and reflex taking control and taking the mind beyond the limits of the body. Two minds acted without thought, dodging and twisting to avoid enemy fire one moment, then stabbing out and plucking an adversary from the sky the next.  
  
Jack's jaw dropped as his wingman executed a full loop and rained cannon fire on a fleeing RAF aircraft, then loosed a Sidewinder that shattered another. The sole Navy Typhoon suddenly pulled up, airbrakes deploying, and shot up its pursuer as it overshot.  
  
"I've never seen the like in all my life!" Carrie-Anne said wonderingly. "They're like, like..." words failed her. Jack could only nod in mute agreement.  
  
//Luke Skywalker would be proud of OH BLOODY HELL!// An enemy aircraft had finally got lucky and blasted 'Lizzie's' right engine. It instantly burst into flames, and the aircraft began to lose height.  
  
"Bail out, Lizzie! Eject!" 'Mark' yelled at her.  
  
"What a great idea!" she replied testily, and pulled the handle. "SHIIIIT!"  
  
Ejection is not fun. First your canopy blows off with an earsplitting bang as the carefully placed explosives detonate uncomfortably close to your body -it is possible in most fighters to reach out and touch both sides of the canopy- and for a split second you are exposed to the full force of the wind; stick your head out the window of a TGV at full speed if you want to both discover what this feels like and earn a Darwin Award for self-elimination by extreme idiocy. Then you are hurled bodily from the aircraft by a small rocket motor six inches from your arse, fall for a short while, and are suddenly dragged to a near-halt by your parachute- this last is especially uncomfortable if one possesses testicles. Then, if you are exceptionally unlucky -as Lyra was this time around- you get dumped in the sea.  
  
There was a crowded fifteen seconds that Lyra recalled mostly as a jumbled haze of spray, cold and that horrible squeaky noise that comes from trying to scramble over wet rubber, which set her teeth on edge. She lay in the bottom of the self-inflating survival raft, breathing deeply and cursing under her breath.  
  
"Just when QRA had got as depressing as it possibly could, life dumps something worse on me," she groaned. "Is my karma really this bad?" Her life had flashed before her eyes when she'd pulled the eject handle, and she could have done without some of it being brought back to her. Most of the bits surrounding St Sophia's, for example. //Why couldn't I flash back to my 21st birthday? Or when Will and I borrowed Dave's motorbike and headed off into the Lake District for the weekend?//  
  
Idly, she wondered why the RAF had apparently decided to turn against the Navy. Some sort of coup? Well, it was possible. The broadsheets had run a number of panic-stricken articles about BNP infiltration of the Forces recently, but she hadn't taken them seriously.  
  
Then she saw a familiar silhouette appearing on the horizon. "Nice timing, Dave," she said to herself dryly, pulling the distress beacon from her gear.  
  
She had a nasty feeling that this was going to be a very, very long week. 


	2. A Prophetic Nightmare

Usual disclaimers apply. Many thanks to Ceres Wunderkid, Ben Roshi, KaiserMonkey and everybody else for their praise and encouragement. All my love to Amber39, with apologies for abusing her characters slightly in this story- she'll know what I mean.  
  
We completed the transition to this world, one we hadn't visited before, and I discovered that we were over Berlin, pretty much where we'd been before. But something was terribly, appallingly wrong.  
  
I could see a huge copy of the Arc d'Triumphe, as big as a dozen buildings, straddling the city. There was a great dome, twice the size of any football stadium in the world, directly ahead of me. I glanced down at the novel on the copilot's seat, Fatherland by Robert Harris. I realised I was seeing the Berlin that it described; a Berlin that -in my world, at least- existed only in the mind and plans of Albert Speer, Hitler's pet architect.   
  
"Holy mother of God," Mary breathed. She tried the radios, seeking commercial frequencies. As she worked, Will tugged at my sleeve. "Look," he told me. I saw that there was a parade, and somebody was burning a Star of David. I felt sick to the very pit of my stomach.  
  
"The radio says something about... Final Solution Day," Mary half-whispered, her voice close to cracking with... what? Horror, fear, anger? Maybe all of them. Certainly all of those were filling my mind.  
  
I closed my eyes, trying to make it all go away, and failed. Through the clouds of thought came a memory, pin-sharp and poignant. My grandfather, the number tattooed on his wrist and a terrible sadness in his eyes, telling me about what he'd seen. What had been done to him.  
  
I felt millions of men, women and children speak to me through the ages, imploring me to seek justice.  
  
And by God, seek it I would. I switched to full combat mode, yelled at the others to man battle stations... and woke up.  
  
"Christ, what a nightmare," I said under my breath. Elaine mumbled something and went back to sleep. Where had my subconscious come up with all that lot? It had been years since I read anything by Robert Harris, and I haven't GOT a Jewish grandfather. Very, very odd.  
  
Oh well, there was nothing to be gained by agonising over it. I carefully got out of bed, and went into the galley area for a coffee. I downed it quickly, and stood in the open doorway for a cigarette. I closed my eyes for a second... and another vision hit me.  
  
I saw an aircraft carrier, with a couple of escort ships nearby. Suddenly a missile streaked in and blew a hole through one ship's hull. I faintly heard the scream of klaxons as the fleet sounded action stations.  
  
"Red Leader, Blue Leader and Blue Two, immediate launch!" Two F22s lifted from the deck of the carrier. How was I hearing their radio chatter? A single Sea Typhoon followed, firing out of the catapault. I looked closely, and saw deck crew frantically trying to ready another Typhoon for launch. Six other Typhoons appeared over the horizon, and began... attacking the carrier!  
  
//What the hell is happening?//  
  
The Sea Typhoon opened fire first. "Red Leader fox two, fox two!" Lyra's voice, I realised with mild surprise. Then she was among them, opening fire with her cannons. The F22s weren't too far behind.  
  
I can't really describe the next few minutes. It was a vicious close range dogfight, and Lyra truly outdid herself. Will -Blue Leader, I thought- was never far away. They were a fearsome fighting entity, acting and thinking as one. Nothing could come near either of them; if it tried, a missile or volley of gunfire forced it away. It was fascinating to watch, but I knew it couldn't last for too much longer.  
  
When it came, it wasn't as nasty as it might have been. A lucky burst of fire from an enemy plane ripped through the Sea Typhoon's left engine, setting it on fire. The fighter was thrown into a flat spin, and half a second later the ejector seat fired.  
  
"Base, this is Blue Leader. Red Leader is down, requesting recovery helo, over!"  
  
"Negative, Red Leader. Too many bandits in the air at Red Leader's position. We'll try and get a boat in. Continue orbiting her position and provide air cover until it arrives, over."  
  
"Roger. Wilco, over and out."  
  
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again I was still standing at the doorway. My cigarette was unchanged; I could only have been out for a fraction of a second. This was just TOO weird. Something was wrong, very wrong, and Will and Lyra were right in the thick of it. I went to the cockpit and switched on the radio. Instantly, the cockpit speakers came alive with loud, 'patriotic' music. //What in...?// The music gave way to a voice. "People of Great Britain! Your nation will soon become truly great once more! As I speak, sections of the military are wresting control of the country from those who seek to drag her down with immigrants, niggers and faggots! Britain for the British!" The voice mercifully shut up, and was replaced by the national anthem. I switched to the international distress frequency, and it got worse.  
  
"Mayday, mayday! Can anybody hear me?" An Indian-accented voice. "There are soldiers outside my house, they're killing everybody in the street who isn't white, women and children and everybody! They're coming through the door... No, please, NO!" The voice ended in a scream, almost drowned out by shots.  
  
"Oh, Jesus, this just can't be happening. It's just too insane to be true..."  
  
Mary and Elaine were up, standing behind me. Mary crossed herself, for the first time in fifteen years. As rapidly as I could, I calmed myself. //You're a fighter pilot, Savage! Think like one. ACT like one! Get into the air, assess the situation, and then start blowing the shit out of the enemy!//  
  
"Get suited up. Top and rear turrets only, we'll stay low and keep the belly guns out of the fight. I'm going to get a position fix on Will and Lyra's squadron; they'll be in the thick of all this. We've toppled a government before, and we can stop another one from being toppled. Let's do this!"  
  
A few moments later, we were screaming out of the valley down the centre of a remote island off the Scottich coast. With several caves easily adaptable for storage of munitions, fuel and supplies, it had been a perfect replacement for the old windmill in Norfolk as a supply cache and home base. I kept us low, at a mere one hundred feet, and activated the forward and rear infared cameras. My radar was useless, with mush from seaspray and the surface of the water blinding it- hopefully everybody else's as well. The wide-angle lens gave me a reasonable picture of the sky around me, though Elaine would have to scan the sky with night-vision gear as well.  
  
"Hello any callsign, hello any callsign. This is Alpha Bravo three zero one. Could anybody not currently supporting the fascist takeover come in, please?"  
  
A familiar voice replied over the distress frequency. "This is Flight Lieutenant Elisabeth Silverton of 55 Squadron, Royal Navy. I'm down about three miles away in your one o'clock, and I have you in visual and can also see you, over." Despite myself, I laughed at this one. Lyra was still Lyra. She knew we had to act as if we didn't know each other, but still she used a joke I'd once made.  
  
"Roger that. I think I can see you. Can you tell that fighter orbiting you not to shoot at me? I'm going to set down and pick you up. You'll have to give me a strobe, over."  
  
"Strobing now!" The infared strobe, invisible without night vision goggles, pinpointed her position. I carefully set us down nearby, retracting the rear turret but warning Elaine to keep an eye out for incoming hostiles. Leaving both engines idling, I hastily got the door open.  
  
"Over here!" Lyra frantically paddled the life raft towards the plane, as an aircraft screamed overhead. I heard the roar of its cannons, answered by Elaine in the turret.  
  
"Come on! We're wide open!" I grabbed her by the collar and hauled her aboard unceremoniously. I didn't think of Pan until somewhat later, but he was inside her survival suit much as he usually did when flying with Aurora. "You okay?"  
  
"Fine, just bruised. That's the first time I've ever ejected," she remarked. "What's happened to the rest of the squadron?"  
  
"Ask me again when we're in the air. You up to manning the lower turret?"  
  
HMS Cunningham was a wreck. The main hangar had taken a direct hit, and the whole ship was nearly ready to break apart. Flight Lieutenant 'Mark Ransom' winced as he overflew her. Jack McAllister, his wingman, sighed.  
  
"What do we do now, skipper? Head for dry land?"  
  
"Which part? We don't have a clue who's on our side or which airfields are safe, and we don't have enough fuel to make any European countries. Wait, wait..." He saw nothing else for it but to take an insane risk. "Can you see that aircraft that contacted us around here anywhere?"  
  
"Yeah, it's in our four o'clock at about five miles and angels one thousand. You haven't really explained that yet, by the way."  
  
"I was telling the truth, mostly. That website WAS created in response to all those daft stories about what Dr Malone and the rest of us allegedly got up to in an alternate dimension. My stepfather WAS taking the piss a bit. The only thing I didn't tell you was that every single word is absolutely true."  
  
"well, it makes about s much sense as all the other crap that's happened to us in the last hour. Do we follow that aircraft?"  
  
"Affirmative. Take up standard escort formation, and switch over to GUARD frequency." The two fighters moved alongside the bigger aircraft. Will's navigator, a relatively taciturn guy called Mitch, took a thoughtful swig from his water bottle.  
  
"Is it just me, or are things getting very wierd?" he remarked.  
  
"I can't realy answer that. I think my definition of wierd is a different than yours. I'll explain some time, but I really don't feel up to going into it right now."  
  
"That's fine by me, Mark," said Mitch wearily, "absolutely fine."  
  
"Do you two think you can land those things on top of our base island?" I asked them.  
  
"I can probably manage it, but I don't know if the plane can," Will replied. I shook my head; the Harrier had been designed and operated with a view towards being used on improvised runways, but I'd be surprised if Lockheed Martin had bothered to even look into it. //Bloody Yanks!//  
  
Well, we'd have to worry about that when we were on terra firma. 


	3. New Faces And New Problems

Watching Will and his wingman set down on top of the little island made me wince. I was expecting their landing gear to push its way into the ground like a bluebottle's footprints. Typical of the US military-industrial complex, who never seem to expect to use their kit under anything less than optimal conditions, not to think about such things. Add to that a thirty-knot crosswind and visibility down to about the length of a standard tennis court, and you have a pilot's worst nightmare. God alone knows how they got down alive (presumably Will is in His good books), but they did.  
  
I made an ordinary landing and taxied into the large open-sided cave we used as a hangar, the weighted tarpaulin sliding down behind us like a surrealist rollerblind. Will was already in the hangar, looking cold and in need of a cup of tea. The other three aircrew were with him, wide-eyed with astonishment.  
  
"Nice," was Jack's verdict. "Very Tracy Island-chic." //Great//, I thought to myself. We'd got a comedian along.  
  
"So," said Mary, "where do we go from here?"  
  
"I say we keep out of the fighting until everything settles down a bit and we know where the bad guys are," Elaine replied. "Things are just too chaotic right now for us to go dashing off into battle."  
  
"Not that we're in a position to singlehandedly wipe out the whole lot of the bastards anyway," Lyra pointed out. "What have we got? Two JSFs and this thing," she patted Aurora in an affectionate sort of way. "And Aurora's even worse at close air support than the JSFs!"  
  
The Joint Strike Fighter doesn't perform especially well against small, mobile ground targets. It's fine with standoff weaponry, Mavericks and the like, but when it comes to tankbusting and so on then forget it. The recessed weapon hardpoints are all very fine and pleasant, improving the handling and reducing the radar signature, but they're too few and too small. Could you put a nice big bunch of 37mm rockets in one? No chance! Perhaps I'm just biased because I earned my spurs in the Harrier, which the government unilaterally ditched BEFORE the JSF arrived because they didn't forsee being in a conflict without US support in the four years between the Harrier being scrapped and the JSF delivered. I'm sure they said that in 1981, too. (Author's note: The narrator served in the Falklands war, being shot down and retrieved by a Royal Marine search-and-rescue mission headed by Will Parry's father, hence his involvement.)  
  
Well, the Navy realised rapidly that the JSF was rubbish for CAS, and something needed doing about it. The first land-based Eurofighters (Typhoons to us Brits) were proving very adept in this particular role, so the RAF loaned the Navy a couple to see if they could land on and take off from a carrier without breaking anything. They performed well, though they forced the Navy to operate two separate aircraft with completely nonstandard parts, something the Americans cheerfully do as a matter of course. A friend of mine in the US Air Force, who I cross-trained with in their version of the Harrier (noticed how they wouldn't just buy them off BAE, but insisted on building their own inside the USA?), summed this up perfectly. "If the F18's a Porsche and the A-10's a Snowcat, most of your kit's a 4WD people carrier." I know which one I'd rather use every day.  
  
I wonder what he'd think the Aurora Borealis was? The DeLorean out of Back to the Future, probably.  
  
I had to agree with Lyra about Aurora and close air support, recalling the assault on the Ministry of Theology. We never really got to the bottom of why the whole building went up like that, but I had regarded Aurora's viability as a strike aircraft with a certain amount of suspicion ever since. After all, a great deal of the rubble landed on top of me, putting me in hospital for several days. Anyhow, Aurora simply isn't as good a combat aircraft as our reputation in one or two worlds might lead you to believe. Zepplins and piston-engined aircraft are one thing, but modern combat aircraft are another matter. Our guns weren't powerful enough to do real damage to decent armour, and we could only carry six missiles- and we were limited in what sort by the size of the weapon bays, just like the JSF. Our weapons stockpile wasn't really suited to agressive actions either; short range heat seekers and HARM missiles designed to knock out hostile fire-control radars.  
  
We went over all these points in Aurora's previously spacious lounge area. Eight people trying to fit into space normally occupied by a maximum of five is a wee bit uncomfortable.  
  
"Well," said Carrie-Anne, McAllister's pretty Welsh navigator, "what are we going to do? Work on our own, or try to link up with the good guys?"  
  
"I'm sort of reluctant to work with the regular government," I replied. "I've had to shoot down three planes that attacked us, and there'll be people there who are about as pleased to see me as I will be to see them."  
  
"True. There'll be civilian resistance, though. Have you got any contacts in London, say?"  
  
Elaine and I looked at one another. I raised one eyebrow.  
  
"No. No WAY. We are not under any circumstances working with those maniacs ever, EVER again," she said firmly. "Apart from the fact that Johnathan West and all his buddies are mentally unstable, he made us both look like complete and utter morons!"  
  
"You WERE snogging on a beach in the middle of an all out assault landing," Mary reminded her none too gently. "They are all somewhat round the twist, though." This was true; John and friends were making a very good living by wrecking prisons all over Europe and turning all the inmates loose, for a small fee, and current estimates of the number of cops and prison guards they've killed since they started out (their average age being fifteen at the time) exceed four hundred.  
  
For all that I rather liked John, in particular. I'd expected a psycho straight out of America's Most Dangerous Gangs or the other macho crap that Will and I used to watch on Bravo whenever we wanted to deactivate all nonessential brain functions. He actually turned out to be a bit of a nerd, and he'd even read as many Dale Brown techno-thrillers as me. It's hard not to like a guy whose personality is so amazingly at odds with his profession.  
  
The Young Guns are a rowdy but pleasant bunch, and I was rather annoyed when Elaine forbade me from inviting them to my birthday party. Admittedly the police forces of half of Europe are after them, but it still rankled a bit.  
  
"We need all the help we can get right now. Do you have any better ideas?" Lyra countered.  
  
"I bet I haven't got any worse ones!" Elaine retorted hotly. "No. That is absolutely final, you hear?" 


	4. A Brief Farcial Interlude, With Asriel I...

Chapter 4 is going to be a bit more serious than my usual style (only up to a point; highlights will include Dave getting the old cigarette-soaked-in-barbeque-lighting-fluid trick pulled on him and ending up blissed out on painkillers), so I thought I'd put in something a little more lighthearted for you to be going on with.  
  
The newly deceased Lord Asriel was in a foul temper. "Ungrateful bitch. I should've left her in that damn priory. I wouldn't be in this mess now if I had, oh no, I'd be the ruler of the Republic of Heaven!" He paused, but only to draw breath. "I cheat death by the skin of my back teeth, get caught and locked up, and what happens about ten minutes after my daring escape? I get shot by my own daughter!"  
  
"Will you please give it a rest?" grumbled a fellow victim of the Battle of Bolvangar. "Whining isn't going to achieve anything, and I swear to God that if you keep this up I'll be obliged to clout you one right alongside the ear!" Asriel wisely shut up. He'd always thought of himself as pretty good in a fight, but it had recently been brought home to him that there were plenty who were better. That bastard from some other world -the same world as that kid who Lyra was shagging, he remembered irritably- for a start. What was his name, again? Marshall? Something like that.  
  
He wandered through the makeshift town on the shores of the lake, with the intention of going and having a good cathartic sulk. He eventually found himself sitting on a large rock by the lakeside, idly throwing stones into the water.  
  
"Morning," said a new voice. "Well, I think it's morning, but you can't really tell in these parts." Asriel glanced up. A worryingly familiar man was standing nearby.  
  
"Oh, Dr Grumman, nice to see you again. Come to gloat, I presume." He smiled nastily. "The whole Republic of Heaven thing was a total washout, but some woman from that brat Parry's world came up with an absolutely foolproof way of travelling between worlds and blew seven sorts of hell out of the Magisterium with an aircraft like nothing I've ever seen before. The pilot -David something or other, disagreeable bastard anyway- ended up in a cell with me for some bizarre reason. Then, no sooner than I've engineered a dazzlingly audacious escape from the clutches of the Church, I get gunned down by my own bloody DAUGHTER! Can you believe it?" Dr Grumman sighed, shaking his head.  
  
"You ought to know something about me, Asriel. I'm not from your world. My real name is Johnathan Parry. The boy you described as 'that brat' happens to be my son." The look of blind panic in Asriel's eyes was a joy to behold. "I suspect that the man who you shared a cell with was a very good friend of mine."  
  
"Oh, I see," Asriel replied in a rather strangled voice.  
  
"And as for getting shot by... Lyra, yes? Well, that's what you get for fooling around with other people's wives, pal!"  
  
Asriel groaned. An indefinite period with this man for company was far from a welcome prospect. He'd never really liked Grumman at the best of times, but this was worse.  
  
John Parry couldn't help but agree. He was waiting for Elaine, and suspected (hoped) that he had pleny more time to wait. He calculated the chances of Asriel getting on the boat in the next few millenia as something like one in ten to the power of his overdraft, and decided to simply wait on the far bank. Since all that unpleasantness with the Magisterium it had been rather crowded around here, but John wasn't above jumping the queue to escape this idiot. And he'd always been a strong swimmer.  
  
He hastily removed his clothes, and dived in. The boatman shouted something about how he wasn't supposed to do that, but John couldn't have cared less at that point. He reached the far bank, enjoying the appreciative glances from several teenage girls who'd just learned the hard way why narcotics and pedestrian crossings don't mix, and wished he'd thought of a way of carrying his clothing with him.  
  
//Is the prospect of that idiot for company REALLY worse than spending the next God knows how many years standing around in my underwear?// he wondered. Fortunately for him, somebody took pity on him and put his clothes in the boat.  
  
"Coming?" asked a nearby harpy.  
  
"Not yet. I'm waiting for somebody, you see." He grimaced. "Unless that bugger Asriel turns up, of course."  
  
While they waited, John filled her in on his life. In return, he got access to the expansive gossip network shared by the angels, harpies and Gallivespians.  
  
"Oh, you can't be serious!" he groaned. "Dave? They put DAVE in charge of my son's upbringing? A man who I personally witnessed being thrown out of Stringfellows and then getting arrested for pouring soap powder into the fountains in Trafalgar Square?" He beat his head gently against a convenient tree. "In the name of God, why?"  
  
After a little sober reflection, he decided that it wasn't all that bad after all. Any young boy would have worshipped a man like Dave. He was a pilot. He owned a motorbike. He'd been to Knebworth to see the finale of Queen's Magic Tour in 1986. He knew how to make his own fireworks.  
  
It was the part about giving Will a gun that bothered him most, however. "ELAINE insisted? Evn if she did get institutionalised for paranoid delusions, surely she..." He gave up.  
  
//Like it or not, John, it isn't your problem any more. I'm sure Elaine will be able to keep them both out of trouble...// He'd be lucky! 


	5. The Unpleasantness In London

I swept my G36 across the street, and nodded to the others. "All clear, I think." We advanced cautiously, covering each other. With three assault rifles and a twelve-gauge autoloading shotgun between us we made a pretty formidable team.  
  
Mary was currently aboard Aurora, waiting outside the city in case of trouble. The JSFs were back at our base, the spare aircrew manning the turrets. McAllister had tried to convince me to let him fly the Aurora, but I wasn't about to let anybody who hadn't had a bit of practice at handling her anywhere near the controls. I can't honestly say I was altogether behind the idea of putting relative strangers in the gun turrets, but I needed people I could rely on in a scrap behind me.  
  
We had recently reached Peckham, after a long period of extremely cautious walking. I was only vaguely aware of my location, but I'd seen a lot of fighting in and around this area from the air. All we had to do was walk into a few black people, and convince them not to blow us to hell, and we were sorted.  
  
It had been a nightmare flight, with SAM and AAA radar lighting us up every couple of minutes, and no idea who the enemy were. I didn't dare retaliate when we were swept by potentially hostile radars, because we must have confused the hell out of the good guys as well as the enemy. Thankfully nobody had fired on us, presumably being in a similar bind.  
  
There was a sudden whiplash crack up ahead as somebody let off a pistol. I ducked behind cover, searching for hostiles. A quick rattle heralded a submachine gun burst, followed by a single sharp BANG, which might have come from an assault rifle. "Cease fire!" somebody yelled. "We're not with the coup!"  
  
"That's not why we're shooting at you!" a familiar voice replied. "We're shooting at you because you opened fire on us!"  
  
"One of these days your gung-ho attitude to cops is going to get you in trouble, Johnny boy!" I laughed. I heaved myself over a wall, and beheld a group of armed police officers crouching behind some dustbins. A round smashed against the brickwork near my head, making me flinch.  
  
"It's us, you dickhead!" Lyra bellowed irritably as she vaulted nimbly over the wall.  
  
"Oh, sorry." John climbed down from the roof of a nearby building, G3A3 rifle at port-arms; not actually pointing at anybody, but held in a manner which suggests this can change quickly if the need arose. "Didn't recognise you for a minute, I'm afraid." He hadn't changed much from the seventeen year-old I'd first met about a century ago. The unruly mess of black hair was partly contained by an old baseball cap apparently obtained from some bullfighting ring in Spain, and the same tatty jeans, battered trainers and old originally-white jacket were in evidence. Isobel landed behind him, shouldering her MP5K. She was as pale and elfin-pretty as ever, though I noticed a slight abdominal bulge that elicited excited squeals from Lyra and Elaine, who were evidently overwhelmed with warm female something-or-other. Will looked at me ruefully. I shrugged.  
  
"So what happened to John and his mates being mentally unstable, Ellie?" I enquired mildly.  
  
"You men keep out of this!" she replied crossly. "This is girl stuff!"  
  
//Jesus wept,// I silently groaned. //Can things get any more complicated than this?//  
  
"Hi," said John awkwardly. "Long time no see."  
  
"Yeah. Congratulations, mate. How's it feel-?" John stuck his gun almost up Will's nose.  
  
"Don't, just don't. I never asked for this, and I've seen fatherhood at it's worst too many times. I'm bloody terrified of this, and I don't need anybody bloody well saying Well Done!" he growled. "You're only making this harder than it already is, dammit!"  
  
"God, I'm sorry, John. I had no idea," Will apologised. "Listen, I don't know if it helps but I think you'll be a fantastic father, a million times better than your own. You WON'T turn into him, right?"  
  
"Thanks," John said quietly. "I'm sorry I over-reacted a bit, it's been an absolute bitch of a day, you know?"  
  
Isobel shook her head sadly. "It's me who's supposed to get pre-natal depression," she said in a feeble attempt at a joke. "But I'm fine. It's John who's upset and scared."  
  
The cops looked rather surprised at this turn of events. The list of mental problems they'd encountered during their careers was huge, but this was pretty much the first serial killer with clinical depression they'd come across.  
  
"So where's everybody else?" I asked.  
  
"Christ knows. It's been absolute mayhem for the last few hours," John replied. "Mick was saying something about getting 'technical help' earlier, whatever he means by THAT, and I haven't seen him or the others since."  
  
"Isn't 'technical help' an accounting euphemism for one of those pickups with machine guns on the back in the less politically stable African countries?" Will pointed out.  
  
"Oh, come ON, even Mick wouldn't..."  
  
A Ford pickup truck skidded to a halt nearby, a machine gun mounted on a swivel mount in the rear bed. A madly grinning Mick stuck his head out of the driver's window. "Like it?"  
  
"Where the hell did you get hold of this lot?" Isobel asked curiously.  
  
"You don't want to know. Hop in!" We clambered aboard, John insisting that Isobel rode in the front. I took over the big gun, a US Army-issue M60. "He's compensating for something," Elaine giggled. Will and Lyra winced.  
  
"You've never complained before," I said tonelessly. Elaine blushed nicely.  
  
"Just shut up," John said wearily. "Please. I've had a bad enough day without you two squabbling like an old-married couple."  
  
"Married, yes, but I object to being referred to as old," I replied. "Maybe I'll never see forty again, but..."  
  
"I'm warning you, Dave." There was a click as John took the safety catch off his assault rifle. "Mick, please get us out of here."  
  
We roared off, leaving several extremely confused policemen behind.  
  
"We should've arrested them, really," one remarked.  
  
"Why bother? We've got more important things to sort out. And besides," said another, who'd had dealings with the Young Guns previously and would show the scars to new recruits who he thought were a bit too cocky, "I imagine they'll be an even bigger pain in the arse for the bad guys -whoever the hell THEY are- than they are for us!"  
  
"Guess so. I wonder who those others were?"  
  
"Who cares? Let's just get the hell out of this warzone."  
  
The strange cavalcade halted outside a grim and grubby Peckham flatblock. Several armed men on the balconies and walkways levelled weapons at us, but shouldered them at the sight of John and friends. We were waved on past a barricade of furniture and junk, which Peckham has in abundance. A crowd of people were waiting, including a few soldiers.  
  
"They've got the army infiltrated," John explained, "but they've been recruiting on an individual basis, so it's fairly chaotic. We haven't got a clue who to trust and who to kill. It's a bloody nightmare."  
  
"I can imagine. Christ knows what it must be like out at sea with the Fleet." Will slung his G36. "HMS Cunningham's at the bottom of the Irish Sea, and the rest of the Navy must be tearing itself to pieces. I wonder if the rest of Europe's doing anything about it?"  
  
"Well, we helped sort their fascists out. It's only fair, don't you think?"  
  
I reached for my cigarettes, ignoring the resigned sigh from Elaine's direction. I lit one... and it exploded into flame.  
  
"Yeouch! Shit, Jesus, that isn't funny!" I spluttered, trying to brush the burning tobacco off my clothes. "Who the hell came up with a joke like that?"  
  
"Well, I've tried everything else to make you quit. Dipping the tips in barbecue lighting fluid was the last card to play," Elaine said seriously.  
  
"Huh, ingenious!" I said sulkily. "Can anybody spare me one? I'll probably get second degree burns from these."  
  
"Don't give him any!" Elaine ordered. Everybody had a good laugh, Elaine included when she saw my expression. I wandered off to scrounge a smoke in peace, asking myself -not for the first time- why somebody couldn't have warned me what I was in for when I asked Elaine to marry me. On the other hand, I bet she wishes somebody had warned her what SHE was in for when she said yes. Will, Mary and Lyra watch the two of us bickering with wry amusement, though my stepdaughter-in-law can compete with Elaine when she wants to.  
  
My cellphone buzzed. "Hello?"  
  
"Dave, it's Mary. We have a BIG problem. You probably aren't going to believe this, and you definitely aren't going to like it."  
  
"I'm listening."  
  
"My sensors just went crazy. Somebody just cut a portal about half a mile away from you, a big one."  
  
"What?" I nearly dropped the ancient Trium Eclipse. "You can't be serious. Some lunatic's made another Knife or something?"  
  
"Dave!" Elaine yelled. "You'd better see this!" I came running, and climbed the stairs to the third-floor walkway of the flatblock. "Oh my GOD!"  
  
A huge portal had opened in a clearing, and tanks were rolling out of it. I didn't recognise the make, but I recognised the insignia. Each tank was painted with the twin lightning bolt of the SS. Behind them I caught a glimpse of some sort of laser device or something on the back of a truck.  
  
"I don't know what form this Democratic Socialist Republic of Narnia or whatever is supposed to take," I told Will, "but Neo-Nazis don't feature anywhere in the gameplan, of that I am certain!"  
  
"Well said. I think we'd better get the hell out of here before they start shooting at us."  
  
John was already sprinting for the nearest 'technical'. He vaulted into the driving seat and revved the engine. "I need a gunner. Everybody else start heading into the city while I try and distract them." I took up the gunner's position, hastily calling Mary back.  
  
"Mary, we need you airborne RIGHT NOW. There's hostile armour coming through that portal, with SS markings. They're about ten minutes from blowing us sky high. Me and John are going to distract them in a technical."  
  
"A WHAT?"  
  
"Haven't you watched Black Hawk Down?"  
  
"I know what a technical is, you moron. It's the part about enemy tanks. It's suicide!"  
  
"Suggest a better way of buying everybody else some time, then." I rang off. "You don't have to do this, John. Let that kid know their dad."  
  
"Trust me, the poor little bugger wouldn't thank me for it. Hold tight!" We roared out from behind the barricade, blasting wildly at the tanks. The second technical was soon rushing out behind. The tanks completely ignored us, evidently seeing right through our plan, so John headed straight for the nearest.  
  
"There's a crowbar by your feet!" he screamed at me. "Take this!" He reached throught the cab's rear window and thrust a grenade into my hands. Even by John's standards it was a crazy plan, but in the absence of anything resembling an alternative...  
  
I dropped my G36 to the bed of the truck, and braced myself as John braked right next to the tank. I jumped across, and quickly wrestled the crowbar into position. "Come on," I hissed, "come ON, you bloody thing!" I saw another tank swing its turret around. //Holy shit, they aren't going to...// A volley of 7.62mm fire erupted from the tank's coaxial machine gun, ripping the technical's rear to pieces and narrowly missing me. //Right, sod this for a game of soldiers!// I grabbed my rifle and ran, John not far behind. We dived for cover behind a low wall, safe from small arms fire for now. I prayed I hadn't annoyed them badly enough to make them use their main armament.  
  
My phone vibrated again, a single longish burst which signalled a text message. The name displayed read 'Al B', an innocuous cover for the number of a SIM card plugged into the Aurora Borealis's brand new microwave comms antenna. It might seem an expensive and needlessly technical alternative to a perfectly ordinary carphone set, but having a regular mobile switched on aboard an aircraft in flight buggers the instrumentation, radio and navigation systems. I found this out for myself the hard way, damn near crashing into the sea on our third proving run; partly my fault for buying Will a posh Nokia 7210, and forgetting to warn him to turn it off.  
  
I read the message, which was immaculately typed: "You're a lunatic. Elaine will kill you even if the tanks don't. Now get the hell outta there!" I smiled ruefully, shaking my head. //Point taken, Mary.//  
  
"Time we weren't here, John!" I yelled, geting to my feet. "Here comes our air support!"  
  
Aurora made a single fast flypast, lower and rear turrets humming. Mary looped over, arming the quartet of AGM-65 Maverick antitank missiles under the wings. Carrying so many of these was a risk, leaving us with only two air-to-air missiles for self-defence, but it was just as well we'd gone in for them. Without some serious heavy firepower we'd be sunk, and besides, we could always leg it and use the jump drive if we were attacked by hostile fighters.  
  
Four of the six tanks blew apart under direct hits, and the others began to scatter. The large missile pods mounted on one side of their turrets swung upwards, and what I had taken to be something like a Milan antitank job rocketed towards the aircraft. It must have been a Stinger or something, because Aurora rocketed upwards, flares spilling from the dispensers.  
  
"Bugger!" I hastily reloaded my G36 with full metal jacket rounds, which moved so fast that they could go through a man's body like an icepick without him noticing. I fired a five round burst into the nearest tank's missile pod, which exploded in a shower of sparks and shrapnel. I ducked the return fire, and decided to make a run for it.  
  
"Hop in mate!" John called, skidding the technical to a halt beside me. I climbed aboard, and manned the M60. Two helicopters were vectoring on us, and a missile exploded where I'd been standing a few minutes ago.  
  
"Hit it!" I yelled, letting off an answering burst. John didn't need telling twice. He put his foot down and swerved into a side street. Another missile jetted into a wall behind us, showering me with brick dust. "Keep away from buildings!" I screamed over the roar of the pickup's engine. "They don't care who they kill!" Under other circumstances we would have stayed in fairly crowded areas, with the enemy helicopters unable to fire because of their rules of engagement, but we weren't up against soldiers any longer. We were up against thugs, and possibly the SS as well, so neither were likely to HAVE rules of engagement. "Our Father who art in heaven," I said to myself, "I know we haven't always seen eye to eye in the past, but I really could use a little help right now!"  
  
I carried on firing, and caught the lead chopper -a Puma rigged out with wing mounted rocket launchers and miniguns- just beneath the rotorhead. It heeled over and slammed into the river, blowing apart in a gratifying fireball.  
  
"Thank you, Lord. I owe you one for that."  
  
The other Puma blew a hole in the road in front of us, pitching the front end of the pickup into an Underground line and catapaulting me into the tarmac, ten yards down the road. My knee smashed into the rollbar atop the truck's cab, splintering viciously. I hit the ground, rolled and skidded along, my tough flightsuit saving me from friction burns.  
  
//Oh well, He giveth and He taketh away,// I told myself philosophically, just before succumbing to the pain and passing out.  
  
I regained consciousness in my bunk aboard the Aurora. I could feel and move all four limbs, which was a good sign. The lower part of my right leg appeared to be missing, which was not. The bandages covering the stump suggested that my leg had taken an even worse beating than I'd realised.  
  
"Shit," I said without much feeling. I had at least 20cc of morphine in my bloodstream at this point, and I was actually feeling fairly cheerful under the circumstances.  
  
"Hey, I hope you recovered my other shoe, that was quite an expensive pair!" All right, perhaps 'cheerful' isn't quite the right word. 'Stoned out of my mind' might be a little nearer the mark. Saved me a fortune in dismemberment therapist's fees, though.  
  
Elaine came to the door. "How are you feeling?" she asked.  
  
"A wee bit legless," I giggled. "How much of the white stuff did you give me?"  
  
"Probably too much. Don't you get used to this, Dave. The cigarettes are bad enough!" Elaine gave me a kiss, and handed me a mug of tea.  
  
"How long was I out for?" I asked after a few sips. "Ugh. Was it Mary's turn?" Americans can't make tea. Fact of life.  
  
"About eight hours, including the time under anaesthetic while an Army medic patched you up. He couldn't save your leg, though. It was about two feet from the rest of you when backup got to your position. And yes, Mary made the tea."  
  
"I see," I replied, putting my cup down on the AOL free trial CD which served as an inexpensive coaster (Author's note: Does everybody do this, or just me, my dad and my FanFiction OCs?). "How's John?"  
  
"Smashed up his collarbone and a couple of ribs, with whiplash and a concussion on top. He hadn't come round yet when I last checked."  
  
"Nasty," I said reflectively. "Now how the hell do I get out of bed and go to the bog?"  
  
"I managed to scrounge you some crutches, though God knows there's barely enough medical supplies to go around. I suggest you wait until the morphine wears off, though." She leaned a pair of crutches within my reach.  
  
"Under other circumstances I'd agree, but I REALLY need to go." I grabbed them, and stood awkwardly but without falling over. I'd been on crutches twice before years ago after messing up a practice parachute landing and more recently after that embarassing business with the Ministry of Theology, so this wasn't an entirely new experience. My body now massed less, but not by enough to put my sense of balance out, and the worst challenge the lack of one foot would provide for the moment was how to pee standing up.  
  
A short while later, I was sitting in the radar operator's station as we returned to base, with our new friends in the gun turrets. I was off flying for the forseeable future, which annoyed me as this seemed a relatively minor injury compared with some. A fellow Harrier pilot I knew quite well lost an arm when he was forced to eject and the canopy didn't shatter fully, and another colleague ended up in a wheelchair after his Sea King blew an O-ring seal and nosedived into some power cables. And these are examples of a relative minority who didn't crash badly enough to die. I couldn't really complain, when I thought about it, which is probably the only reason I didn't go to pieces once the drugs wore off. That and a crtain amount of inbuilt natural resillience bolstered by twelve years of hectoring from Elaine, including the ten we've spent actually married, I suppose.  
  
Will had empathised quite strongly, since he'd lost most of two fingers in that nasty knife -sorry, Knife with a capital K- some years ago. My reassuring remark at the time? "Don't worry, the ladies love a few scars." In reply he had picked up a handy breadknife (we were in the kitchen) and asked if I wanted some, then. Quite witty from a guy who'd supposedly been eternally separated from his soulmate, except that he had been in deadly earnest, and the humour in this had only occured to either of us some weeks later.  
  
"You know, the whole 'Nazis from another universe' thing explains a lot, really," Jack remarked. "The British Nationals and the like are a shambles, and there is NO WAY they could infiltrate the Navy the way they did."  
  
"Or the Army and the RAF," Will remarked. "If we were in the US it might work, though!" This was a pleasing trend, which had seen the various branches of HM Armed Services cast aside their old rivalries, and gang up on the US military instead. Suits me, I never forgave the American military-industrial complex -Lockheed Martin especially- for bribing half the defence procurement personnel in Western Europe into buying the F104, which killed off more pilots than any war with the Russians would have.  
  
"It makes things even harder than they already are, though," Mary added. "They could screw up the whole ecosystem of both worlds if they keep cutting portals like that. Even if they close them properly there's Spectres to deal with."  
  
"Nice strategic weapon, really." Carrie-Anne. "Can you imagine the chaos one of those would cause if our forces came across it? And there have to be ways of sheilding yourself against them."  
  
"Yeah, and what this aircraft's built out of is one of them," Elaine added, making final approach preparations. "We figured out a way of killing them off with the jump drive, so maybe we can..."  
  
"Cittigaze," Lyra said speculatively. "The survivors turned the Drive into a portable Spectre-zapping system, yeah?"  
  
"I think we ought to borrow a few," I said, guessing what she meant.  
  
"First things first," Elaine said, putting us in a shallow glide. "If what they say about woman drivers is true it probably applys to woman pilots as well, so hold on tight everybody."  
  
"It isn't," Mary, Lyra and Carie-Anne said firmly.  
  
"Hah! Tell that to Dave!"  
  
"What?" I spluttered. "I have NEVER complained about your driving skills, and not letting you ride my Ducatti is completely different!"  
  
We continued arguing until Elaine slowly taxied through the water into the cave we used as a base. Will went with Jack, Mitch and Carrie-Anne to take their fighters on a strike mission somewhere, whilst the rest of us set about refuelling and rearming Aurora. I was relegated to checking over the weapon control systems, running various self-test routines from the cockpit.  
  
In a blaze of white light and a burst of harps and rather off-key choiral singing, which made me wince slightly with the whole tweeness of it, Xanthania appeared. "Hi," Mary remarked casually, jacking a Sidewinder into position below the left wing before turning to talk to her. Her bird-daemon had appeared, I noticed with mild surprise.  
  
"Greetings, my children," she boomed in reply, making me shake my head. Lyra was twenty-five, for God's sake, and she was the youngest regular Aurora Borealis crewmember. I'm forty-eight, Elaine's six months younger and Mary's on the edge of reaching the big 4-0, so why she insisted on referring to us as 'my children' I have no idea.  
  
"Hello again," I said conversationally, making my way to the door. "Am I right in guessing that the whole weird prophetic dreams bit was something to do with you? The whole Jewish grandfather bit was a touch theatrical, but otherwise, great!"  
  
"Yes, it was indeed me. I am glad you thought it was effective," she said lightly. "I see that you have not escaped unscathed from recent events." I glanced down at where my leg wasn't, and nodded with a rueful grin.  
  
"Yeah, second time I've narrowly avoided death in London. That'll teach me to let John drive!"  
  
Xanthania laughed, and sat down on a nearby HARM anti-radar missile. Elaine and I winced, and Mary took cover. Lyra tried not to laugh. "She's an ANGEL, people! And a missile won't explode if you sit on it anyway!"  
  
"Don't you believe it," I replied. "I heard of a bloke who sat on the end of an Exocet and sparked the detonator, blew half a deck section sky high..."  
  
"Yeah, right."  
  
"Do you know how long the Nazis from that world have been in cahoots with the ones here?" Elaine asked, ever practical.  
  
"We are not certain, but they have been creating portals for some time. Mercifully they seem to have realised the dangers of leaving them open, and somehow they have shielded against Dust leakage."  
  
"Thank God for small mercies," I replied sourly. "You'd think one world would be enough, even for a maniac like Hitler or his cronies."  
  
"Wasn't enough for my father, was it?" Lyra remarked rather bitterly. "And he was just as barmy." Couldn't argue with that, really; 'a napoleonic AND messianic complex', I believe my exact words were last time I saw Asriel.  
  
"True. However, I have important information for you, and I cannot stay long," Xanthania said urgently. "There is a meeting between the forces of the Reich and their allies, in Lyra's world and yours, three days from now. If you can infiltrate them, you can gather information about their plans."  
  
"Okay, but how?"  
  
"There is a cocktail party or some similar event being used as cover, in the London of Lyra's world. With care you might gain entry," she explained.  
  
"Oh, what fun!" I cried, with a brittle edge in my voice. "You know, I'm starting to develop a serious phobia about the old smoke. And if this means I've got to wear a tuxedo..." 


	6. Social Engagement

Author's note: in the unlikely event of this reaching the silver screen, 'Silver Machine' by Hawkwind MUST feature in the soundtrack. Period.  
  
It was a dull party. The occasional SS and Wehrmacht uniform was a welcome change from the unrelieved greyness of the men, whilst the women were all trying to outdo each other for gaudiness- I've known more tastefully dressed hookers. The SS were only talking to each other, shunned even by the Wehrmacht. This was neutral ground so far as the organisers were concerned; it had become quite la mode to invite travellers from other worlds to this sort of thing, so we fitted in quite well.  
  
"Important lesson for you, Lyra," Elaine remarked. "If you buy a pair of pricey stilettos, A: wear them home and B: keep the reciept. Ten more minutes in these bloody things and I'll need to see an osteopath, I swear."  
  
"Alright for some, don't you think?" Will remarked. I laughed. I was wearing a temporary prosthetic that worked more or less okay, though it was a long way short of being as good as my actual leg. It beat crutches, though.  
  
"Oh my God! Look," Lyra hissed suddenly. I looked. A woman in a refreshingly understated green evening gown was leaning against the wall by the buffet, looking thouroughly bored with the whole affair. I looked for her daemon, who suddenly appeared bearing a cocktail.  
  
It was a golden monkey. "Jesus CHRIST. Is that-?"  
  
"Yeah. It's my mother." Lyra resisted the temptation to put one hand near the velcroed slit in her dress over the top of her pistol. "What the HELL is SHE doing here?"  
  
I adjusted the jacket of my old Navy dress uniform. "I'll go talk to her. No, Elaine, if she's got half a brain she'll realise who you look like. There's not much chance she'll recognise me or Mary, and she'll probably respond better to me on account of the fact that I'm male, unless she went to a certain sort of boarding school."  
  
"Yeah, she always struck me as that sort," Lyra said vehemently. "And I was always getting my bum pinched at St Sophia's."  
  
"How does a guy cope with that sort of competition, huh?" Will said, shaking his head. We didn't laugh.  
  
//Here goes.// "Lady Marissa," I said formally. She glanced up at me without a great deal of enthusiasm.  
  
"Who the hell are you?" Refreshingly direct, anyway.  
  
"Let's just say we have a few mutual acquaintances," I replied smoothly.  
  
"Well, that's marvellous. Now leave me in peace. You aren't my type," she said dismissively. So much for the uniform theory.  
  
"My lady, you misread my intentions totally," I replied charmingly. "Apart from anything else, my wife is watching." I glanced in Elaine's direction, grinning ruefully.  
  
"Oh, is that your wife?" she said, contempt plain in her voice. "And I assume that that is your son..." she paused, somewhat taken aback. //Trouble!//  
  
"Stepson, actually," I replied. "His late father was Dr Grumman. Did you ever meet him? One of my oldest friends."  
  
"Oh. OH. Is that why you married his wife?" She laughed without humour.  
  
"What are you implying?" I retorted, anger creeping into my voice. "You are hardly in posession of the moral high ground even if it were true, which it most certainly isn't!"  
  
Elaine had heard the last part of the exchange, and her eyes were flashing dangerously.  
  
"You know, I think your mum and mine are about to have an almighty catfight," Will remarked.  
  
"Yep. Fiver on yours," Lyra remarked, turning to watch with interest. I was hastily backing away, as I caught a hint of that almost electric force Lyra had described her mother as posessing when roused. Elaine didn't even BLINK when the full beam hit her, but simply moved within range and attacked. You can't spend a few Saturday nights in reception at the A&E in Aldershot without learning a few things about hand to hand combat, so I truly feared for Mrs Coulter's life; no, that's the wrong word. I certainly wouldn't have taken Lyra up on that bet, though.  
  
I'd been anticipating a slap, but Elaine had better ideas. She went for a vicious jab to the solar plexus, bringing her knee up as Mrs Coulter doubled over. There was a crunch. Mrs Coulter didn't lose her cool, but took Elaine's legs out from underneath her with a fast sweep of her leg. Blood pouring from her nose, she straightened and produced a small silver Colt .25 pistol from her bag.  
  
"Grumman had no taste," she remarked, levelling it at Elaine. I grabbed her gun arm and hammered her knuckles against the wall until she let go, then stepped back and drew my own gun. The others followed suit.  
  
"By that last remark I assume you mean he turned you down," Will said coldly. "Sensible man." Lyra retrieved the little pistol she'd drawn on Elaine, and tossed it to me. I examined it critically.  
  
"I bought you two BB guns for Christmas that could do more damage than this toy. Honestly," I remarked as I turned to Mrs Coulter, "if you're going to carry a weapon then carry a proper one. I could hurt somebody more if I THREW it at them." I chucked it carelessly over one shoulder, illustrating my point when I caught somebody on the ear.  
  
"I'm not without influential friends, you know," Mrs Coulter pointed out. "They won't be pleased."  
  
"We've made a few of our own over the years," Mary replied evenly, "and most of them would happily see you staked out on a cowshed floor, when they're in a good mood. On a bad day they'd flay you alive, nail you to a tree and set fire to it."  
  
"I'd personally rather shoot you myself," Lyra added.  
  
"I've got a parenting manual you can borrow!" Elaine said with a smirk. There was a general laugh from the other guests, who were watching with interest. I wondered what to do next. We had gained no intelligence worth anything, but we had to get out of here before all hell broke loose. Should we take her with us, though? Preventing Lyra from shooting her would be more effort than it was worth in my honest opinion, and it was that or let her go. At this stage I wasn't prepared to let Lyra just kill her now, though, a decision I would later regret.  
  
Mrs Coulter solved the problem rather dramatically by stamping viciously at the side of my knee, or what should have been my knee if not for that car accident a while back. The prosthetic collapsed, sending me flying. She snatched my pistol and fired off three rounds before being knocked backwards by enough lead to make fifty-odd HB pencils. Amazingly, she rolled and came up shooting. //Body armour,// I realised. //Why didn't we think of that?//  
  
A hasty snapshot from Will ricocheted off a wall fixture and shattered a window. People started to scream and duck. Mrs Coulter emptied my pistol's clip in Lyra's direction, grazing her shoulder and knocking her down. Instantly Will let fly half a dozen rounds after her, but she escaped through a side door.  
  
"Christ, she shot her own DAUGHTER! You okay?" I helped Lyra to her feet. Will tossed me my now empty pistol, and made to pursue.  
  
"Forget her," Lyra told him, massaging her shoulder. "Let's just get out of here before the police start asking questions."  
  
"Right." I adjusted the prosthetic and walked a touch awkwardly to the door. "Bloody thing's bent. She's going to suffer for that."  
  
We hailed a cab and piled in, requesting the aerocraft landing strip that in my world is Heathrow. "You okay to fly with that leg?" Will asked.  
  
"Think so. Let's check that shoulder of yours, Lyra." Elaine and I checked the graze. It looked nasty, but hadn't done much besides break the skin.  
  
"Stings like hell, but I can move my arm alright. A stiff drink'd be nice, though."  
  
"Not if you're going to be on one of the turrets or radar," I replied. "I s'pose we'll be needing another damn base now, as well."  
  
"Actually, I wouldn't worry. I'd trust Jack, Mitch and Carrie-Anne to the ends of the earth. I've known them for years; Jack was my wingman in the second Falklands campaign." Will had indeed followed in his father's footsteps, and taken on the dreaded Argies once again two years ago.  
  
"Besides, who'd believe him?" Lyra added. I nodded, reloading my Beretta. We pulled up at the airstrip and headed for the familiar gleaming hull that had been our semi-permanent home for the last decade or so. We boarded the Aurora Borealis with some relief, running the startup checklist.  
  
"Engines one and two lit."  
  
"Hydraulics green. Radar green. FLIR... green."  
  
"Weapons stations one through six, green. No faults showing on gun systems or rocket pod."  
  
"Jump drive green. FTS scan pattern underway."  
  
Checklist completed, I opened the throttles and took off. Once we were in the air, I deployed the turrets, missile pylons and rocket pod. "Battle stations, people. We could have hostile fighters dropping in on us any second." The three women manned the turrets, leaving Will in charge of the radar and infared systems.  
  
"Four contacts at extreme range in our seven o'clock, one one zero miles and closing. Their attack radars are on. No IFF signal."  
  
"Right. I'm switching our transponder on. Lets see how they react... Shit!" The threat warning reciever screamed into my headphones, signalling that a missile lock radar was seeking us. I switched on the radar jamming system and turned in a 180-degree bank, hoping that any missile launched would have trouble hitting a target coming at it head-on. However, the enemy aircraft fanned out and came to bear from different angles. The TWR changed note, and I could see four bright glows at various points in the sky.  
  
"They've launched! Hang on!" I fired the chaff dispenser and hauled Aurora over in a loop, gaining height before diving towards the ground, and levelled out with about six inches to go. The radar screen filled with mush and back echoes from the ground, and hopefully our adversaries would be similarly hampered. Unless...  
  
"Two bandits, right on our six!" Mary warned. I glanced at my screen, which had automatically switched to a rear view camera when the radar picture went.  
  
"I see them. Never seen anything like them before in my life, but I see them. Brace yourselves!" I pulled up, deploying the airbrakes, and watched as the fighters overshot. They were painted black, with a vaguely diamondlike shape reminiscent of the Stealth fighter, but with numerous external missile pylons. I sprayed the nearest one with gunfire, punching holes through the bodywork but doing no apparent damage. They veered off, and lined up for an attack from port and starboard. I leaned heavily on the left rudder, pulling up at the same time so that Elaine and Lyra could get a crack at them. They retreated somewhat, and launched heat seekers. I deployed a burst of flares and pointed Aurora's nose straight at the sky, giving the engines a few seconds of afterburn to propel us a few hundred feet up, and then pulled back all the way. Aurora gracefully turned over on her back like a leaping dolphin, and went into a steep dive. I levelled out at fifty feet, and stuck the burners on again. Will switched his screen over to jump drive control whilst I retracted the turrets.  
  
"Three degrees right, two up, and we're locked. Jump speed in three, two, one... burn it!" I hit the jump button, closing my eyes against the glare and bracing for the sudden deceleration. I'd never got used to the transition process, and it still rattled me somewhat. Will and I exchanged looks, as men who have just survived a nasty experience together.  
  
I glanced at the rearview screen. Blindingly bright spheres opened, resembling holes in the sky. The fighters emerged from them at top speed. "What the-? Christ, they're coming through!" I hadn't throttled back yet, and we were still on full burners, but they were catching up fast. I briefly debated whether to leave the turrets in and use the extra hundred miles or so an hour afforded by the better aerodynamics, but the sound of cannon rounds hitting the tail convinced me that this was a bad idea. I reduced speed, and turned to face the enemy. Hell's bells, there were more of them! I counted at least eight.  
  
"That's not good." I frantically assigned a target to each Sidewinder, and let fly before putting the nose down and storming straight through the formation with guns blasting.  
  
"Five more just showed up," Will warned. "No, make that six. We've got a problem!"  
  
"Yep," I agreed. This wasn't QUITE the worst mess I'd ever been in -Elaine letting herself into my flat [why did I give her a key?] and finding Will, then aged fifteen, and I watching Natural Born Killers and drinking Stella Artois takes that accolade- but it was certainly in the top five.  
  
"Alpha Bravo three zero one, this is Fleet Air Arm 55 Squadron interceptor Blue Leader, do you require assistance, over?"  
  
"Yes, please assist me, yes!" I replied. "There's about a dozen fighters after me and I just ran out of Sidewinders, over."  
  
"Roger that. Blue section, engage the enemy!"  
  
The four Joint Strike Fighters let fly with long-range missiles, knocking several fighters out of the sky and forcing the others to retreat. "Alright, Alpha Bravo, you'll be okay for now. Can you set that thing down on an aircraft carrier?"  
  
"Funnily enough the only thing I never thought to install was a tailhook, but I'll have a go," I replied, with a confidence I didn't feel.  
  
Non-pilots frequently underestimate just how dangerous and difficult a carrier landing is even under optimal conditions. You have to glide down and aim to snag a hook on a length of steel cable on a pitching deck, often in the dark or low visibility, and a minute miscalculation can be deadly. I switched to the vertical-takeoff Harrier from the old Phantom without many regrets, and the Phantom was one of the better carrier-borne designs.  
  
I had quite literally never even attempted to land a plane this size on a carrier; Fleet Air Arm doesn't operate anything as large. Aurora is about the size of the E-2 Airborne Early Warning aircraft used on the USA's largest carriers [rumour has it that they seriously considered the rather detuned airframe design I sold to Shorts to replace the aging Hawkeye], but this was a significantly smaller ship. We also lacked any arrester gear. There is a proccedure for stopping aircraft that have inoperative gear, which consists of stringing a large, taut net across the deck for the aircraft to hurl itself against. This was something that I had experienced precisely once, in training, and it was definitely not high on the Top 100 Things I Want To Do Again.  
  
The others secured themselves in their cockpit seats, the cabin being easier than the turrets to escape from if we went in the drink. "Hold tight, everybody!" I deployed the gear and airbrakes, adopting a nose-high-tail-low position, and made contact with the deck. We bounced, skidded, and slammed straight into the netting. It parted with a tearing sound, and I wrenched the nosewheel around, stamping on the gear brake pedal. We came to a halt with our tail overhanging the foredeck.  
  
With shaking hands, I reached for the open packet of cigarettes on top of my instrument panel, fumbling to light one. After a moment's hesitation, Elaine took another. I made no reference to her constant lectures about smoking as I lit it for her; now was not the time.  
  
It was quite a while before I was able to taxi away from the foredeck, and even longer before I felt able to get up from my seat. Rather unsteadily, I left the plane and headed for the group of officers waiting for me.  
  
"Are you alright?" asked a familiar voice. "Hey, I remember you!"  
  
"Well, I'll be damned!"  
  
Owen Richards was an old drinking buddy of mine, whom I'd first encountered back in 1986 when I was still with Fleet Air Arm. I was a Squadron Leader and he was the new Warrant Officer (Stores), and it pays to be nice to the guy who has absolute power over things like food or spare parts in my job at that time, so we ended up on each other's Christmas card lists. The captain's insignia he was wearing suggested that he'd come on quite some way since.  
  
I explained as much of my circumstances as I thought he'd believe, how I'd begun working with Mary on interdimensional travel after agreeing to look after John's kid. Two years after that, I'd had the most eventful six months of my life; I'd caused a train wreck, been buried in falling masonry, got mixed up in a war AND got off with John's widow. I've probably missed a few things out, but that's the gist of it.  
  
"Only you could get mixed up in that lot, pal! Your mate Johnny West has been explaining about the bits you left out; I don't believe a word of it, of course."  
  
I accompanied him to the aircrew mess. "So the missionary remarks to the chief that he's quite pleased with the reception he got. The chief looks slightly bemused about this, but smiles and nods," a familiar voice was explaining. "So the chief says to him, 'Mind out for the cattle on your way back, and mind you don't step in the humdingi.' Well, I thought it was funny, anyway." [Author's note: apologies to the guy I quite have shamelessly stolen this joke from- he tells it much better, of course]  
  
John was sprawled on a battered sofa, looking his usual rather unkempt self. He was in his usual attire of faded black jeans and T-shirt -this one had a Star Treck motif- accompanied by scruffy trainers. He also hadn't shaved for a couple of days, and his hair was in a state of mayhem as usual. He looked more like a student than a professional killer, especially since he looked as if he could be any age between eighteen and about thirty five. The natty leather shoulder holster containing a handgun somehow jarred with the rest of the image. Isobel, perched on the arm of another sofa, looked an even less likely candidate for Public Enemy Number One. She was pale, and had an air of shyness and distance from the world that I attributed to the hearing aids she'd worn for most of her life. That she was five months pregnant made her look even less ike a hired gun. At least the others looked fairly... criminal-ish, for want of a better word.  
  
Charlie was currently engaged in an animated dispute with a pilot from HMS Queen Elisabeth about the relative merits of Milwall and Tottenham Hotspur, whilst the others looked on in anticipation of the fistfight that usually resulted from Charlie's football enthusiasm.  
  
"Hi guys," I said cheerfully. "How's things in London?"  
  
"A right mess. They've wrecked so much of the city we let them have what was left of it, and much joy may it bring them," Sandy replied. "They're using the same worldhopping technology as you, so we can't even predict where they'll strike next."  
  
"Apart from that, just great," John replied a little scratchily. I got the impression that it hadn't been his week.  
  
"Do we know how many of our forces have gone over to their side?"  
  
"About twenty percent, maybe more. They only make up about a tenth of the forces we're dealing with anyhow." I did the mental arithmetic and winced. "We're in the crap, frankly," Trish concluded. "I think you're about to rejoin the RAF."  
  
"We won't actually try and draft you, or requisition your plane," Richards told us shortly afterwards, "but we desperately need your help; especially you, Dr Malone. Our people are totally mystified by the dimension jump system they're using, but you're this particular universe's leading authority on the technology. As for the rest of you, we need every pilot we can lay hands on, and Aurora is especially important to us."  
  
"Look, if you want the Aurora Borealis to act as a strike aircraft then forget it," I told him. "She doesn't have the ordinance capacity, the speed, or any beyond visual range capability. I never even fitted a proper target acquisition radar. Contrary to our reputation, Aurora is nothing but a scientific research aircraft with a VERY limited self defence capability, and she just isn't up to the job."  
  
"She's all we've got," Elaine replied. "If we use multiplier racks like on the A-10 then we can expand our missile load, and it shouldn't be too hard to strip out the forward guns and fit something heavier. Hey, wait a minute...!" She had a manic gleam in her eye. "We might be able to adapt the jump drive to open a wider portal. It wouldn't be easy, but maybe a couple of fighters in close formation could follow us through."  
  
"Too dangerous; an inch too little clearance and the fighter would lose a wing, and I doubt we could generate a powerful enough EM field to give much margin for error," Mary replied. "Can you imagine trying to keep formation that close at Mach 2.3?"  
  
"What about shoehorning the technology into an F22, or a Typhoon?" suggested Owen.  
  
"Only by stripping out all the avionics and about half the internal fuel tanks," I replied. "Just the projection gear would take up most of the nose, and one jump uses as much power as an AWACS radar does in a whole day. You'd have to build a whole new design of aircraft around the drive system, same as I did."  
  
"Wonderful. I take it that speed is important?" I nodded, and Owen's face fell further. "Then we can forget missile racks; they'll tear off at that speed. You might carry them in the fuselage and fit them once you'd jumped, I suppose. Can that thing land on an unpaved runway?"  
  
"I've landed her on Arctic tundra," I replied. "Aurora needs perhaps four hundred yards of landing strip, half that on takeoff. Hell, we've flown strike missions from forward bases before."  
  
"Not against an enemy like this, though," Will replied gloomily. He had a point; the Magisterium was fifty years behind our equipment. "We desperately need a way to take the fight to them with our main force. What about those portal generators they were using?"  
  
"They're keeping them well behind their lines; capturing one would take a whole battalion, assuming they didn't blow it up themselves."  
  
"Here, maybe," I replied. "But in another world? They might be more complacent there."  
  
"Worth a try, I suppose," Owen admitted. "If you could ferry a small force there, and provide air cover..."  
  
"Sounds right up John's street. We can probably put the Young Guns in the turrets, as well," Lyra suggested. "I imagine the rest of us'll be needed here; pilots are in shorter supply than planes, and that's saying something!"  
  
"Yeah," I agreed. "That means you as well, Ellie. I can handle Aurora on my own, just as long as I've got a gun crew. With the five of them -Isobel is staying here- and a couple of qualified tank crew, we'll be fully loaded."  
  
"I'll see to it," Owen replied. "But how do we go about launching Aurora?"  
  
"We'll have to winch her overboard. It can be done, though it isn't easy," I told him, recalling the time we'd done just that with very little pleasure. It was one of John Faa's few errors, since we could easily have flown the requisite distance and it could have gone wrong in about four million different ways.  
  
"We'll do it as soon as we're in calmer waters. This is just crazy enough to work!" 


	7. Cloak and Dagger

Once Aurora was in the water, I started both engines and ran through the checklist.  
  
"So how exactly do we do this?" John asked me. "You create mayhem whilst we sneak in and grab the projector truck?"  
  
"Honestly, I haven't got a clue. We need to get there, locate a vehicle and assess the security precautions we'll be dealing with before we can plan properly, so we'll need to do some reconissance. That'll entail hiding Aurora somewhere and going in on the ground; she's a little... distinctive, shall we say?" He winced beneath his helmet. I throttled up and took off, and powered up the jump drive. "Okay, everybody, we're about to make a runup to a jump. This part's quite bumpy, so brace yourselves."  
  
I kept my eyes glued to the screen, trying to line the crosshairs up with the fissure that I was aiming at and wishing that I'd brought one of the others along to help me out. This was like trying to manually tune a car radio whilst negotiating rush-hour traffic on the M1. Eventually I got it close enough, and hit the jump drive.  
  
WHAM! There was the usual jolt as our kinetic energy bled away, accompanied by a flash that was painfully bright even through the tinted windscreen. I reduced power to the engines after a few seconds, and turned towards the coast. "Okay people, I'm heading for the Fens. There are people there who'll help us, unless they've been hit by the Nazis. It'll be a safe laying-up point, anyhow."  
  
"Hey, I can see... Oh, bollocks." John and I looked at one another, and then at the twinkling patterns of light. Gun flashes and tracer, and a lot of both. "Get to the turrets, fast!" I ordered.  
  
I made a low, swooping pass over the gyptian town, trying to work out who to shoot at. "Jesus, it's like a bar fight with guns!" I said to myself. The phrase wasn't mine; I'd first heard it used by a character in a Tom Clancy techno-thriller. This was pretty much the sort of situation that Clancy'd had in mind, though. From up here, everybody seemed to be shooting at everybody else all at once. I spotted a couple of armoured vehicles that looked too modern to be local, and watched as one exploded a building with its turret armament. It seemed unlikely that John Faa's forces would do that, so I let fly with a neatly placed quartet of rockets and splashed the vehicle responsible.  
  
"David? Is that you?" a familiar voice shouted above crackling static from the old radio and the noise of battle. "Thank God! They're tearing us to pieces down here!"  
  
"I'll do what I can to help, but try and get your people clear of the town; I can't tell friend from foe up here."  
  
"We're mostly concentrated around the meeting hall, with a few others near the harbour. The rest are the enemy!"  
  
"Got it," I replied. I began making gun passes over the town, keeping away from the areas he'd indicated. Gradually, things began to settle down, and I pulled away to let Lord Faa's forces mop up. I set us down and taxied to the jetty I'd used the last time this place had been attacked.  
  
Lord Faa was waiting for me, a small rifle in his hands. On closer inspection it proved to be a Mauser pistol with a long barrel and a wooden shoulder stock bolted to the grip, with a very long magazine. The barrel also had a wooden grip underneath. "Nice," I said appreciatively.  
  
"Crude, but more accurate than it looks and a ferocious rate of fire when the need arises. Cheap, too." He tucked it under his arm. "Your timing is as impeccable as always, my friend. That's another one we owe you."  
  
"I was coming to ask for your help anyway," I replied. "The same forces are in our world, and we aren't having things a great deal better, quite frankly. What we need to do is outflank them; go right to the rotten heart of the regime and blow it sky high. To do that, we need one of those portal generator things they use, and with your help I reckon we can steal one and make off with it."  
  
"Well, that's hardly going to be easy. The only one we've seen is behind their lines," he replied. "A very long way behind. The Aurora Borealis won't get within twenty miles without getting spotted, and the defences are pretty formidable. Even the legendary silver bird would have a hard time." This last remark carried a little mockery; Lyra had told him a few stories about what the Fleet Air Arm Typhoon could do. I'd always been vaguely embarassed about our formidable combat reputation anyway.  
  
"I was expecting that. I had something a little stealthier in mind. What can you tell me about their base of operations?"  
  
We went over the layout of the encampment, which was set up on the northern bank of the Thames about thirty miles downriver from Oxford. To approach by boat would be risky, as there was a constant watch by guards with night vision gear. The guards were highly attentive, as their CO had issued dire and graphic threats involving electrodes and red hot pokers about what he'd do if anybody was caught napping. Any approaches by land would be a similarly tough proposition.  
  
"Shame we aren't back home," John remarked. There's a pipe running from the river to a water treatment plant big enough to walk through ten abreast right under that; and before you ask, no, they haven't set their camp up in the same place back where we came from. We looked into it."  
  
"Shame," I replied. "Well, any ideas, anybody?"  
  
"HALO drop from the Aurora Borealis?" suggested Charlie. Too many Vin Diesel films, I concluded.  
  
"Even if we had the right equipment, you'd need to jump out of the Space Shuttle. Anything between the altitudes of forty and forty thousand feet would be spotted thirty miles away, and be blown out of the sky. Aurora's many things, but she's no stealth fighter."  
  
"Then what the hell are we going to do?" one of the tank drivers asked. "Every avenue of approach has fifty MGs on it, and we'd need a full mechanised infantry battalion, a tank company and artillery support to make a frontal assault."  
  
"We have precisely none out of three," I replied bitterly. "Besides, if the people in charge have any sense they'll destroy the projector vehicle before they let us capture it."  
  
"Wait a second," cut in Mick, privately educated, science buff and the only person currently present who had a clue how the Malone Dimensional Transition Drive worked. "I've got an idea. The jump drive uses electromagnetic radiation, right?"  
  
"An EMP weapon," John said, comprehension dawning.  
  
"Theoretically, maybe, but almost impossible in practice. Too powerful and we'd destroy the electronics in the projector, rather than just trip the circuit breakers, and we'd have to be less than half a mile from the encampment. Besides, I'd expect armoured vehicles showing that level of technical development to be EMP-hardened, especially if that projector system uses the same basic principle as ours. Nice idea, though," I replied. "Any other suggestions?"  
  
"If we hijacked an enemy vehicle and stole some uniforms, we could bluff our way in," Trish suggested. "Could you pass as German, Sandy?"  
  
"A Sudetenlander, easily, and that ought to be enough. If you don't mind all being Other Ranks, we might get past the outer defences. A few of us could slip away and grab the projector vehicle whilst I chat to the commandant."  
  
"It sounds like a film script, but it's almost silly enough to work," I concluded. "If nobody has a better idea...? Right, that's settled."  
  
Lord Faa's forces found and took control of a truck ferrying supplies from the delivery point at base camp to some outpost further afield, and its cargo included uniforms and weapons. We equipped ourselves carefully.  
  
"Okay," I said thoughtfully. "Lord Faa, can you get some good riflemen in vantage points near the camp? As soon as we start moving, they can start picking off machine gunners, officers, and just generally causing chaos."  
  
"Works for us!" John chipped in. "Trish, Mick, one of you can borrow my G3 for that; neither of you would make convincing stormtroopers, anyway."  
  
The remaining Young Guns, not to mention me, turned to him in shock. John was normally possessive of his preferred weapon, to the point of being mildly neurotic as only somebody with Asperger's Syndrome can be [Author's note: before anybody leaps all over me for being offensive to people with autism, can I point out that I actually HAVE Asperger's?]. I was hit by a sudden insight, and dragged him to one side.  
  
"You've got nothing to prove, John," I told him firmly.  
  
"I don't want to prove anything," he replied hotly. "I'm just tired of being the one who's safely out of the action. I only ever see my targets through a zoom scope, and part of me always feels guilty because the others are out there being shot at whilst I'm half a mile away."  
  
"You what?" Trish blurted. "You've been diving headlong into every single firefight like you don't give a damn if you get hit every day for weeks..."  
  
I was hit by a recollection of the day we'd met in London, and I looked at John properly for the first time. There was a drawn, haunted look in his eyes, as of a man wrestling with a fear he could barely control.  
  
"John, what demon is it you're trying to fight?" I said gently. "What's got you so scared?"  
  
"My father. Myself. My child," he said in a monotone. "I had to kill my own father, remember? I'm hoping I'll save him or her the trouble. I'm scared of what I might become; scared of myself. I'm a killer, a criminal with so many dead men to my name I've lost count. The honest truth is, every time I go into battle I pray I won't live through it. I'm scared to live, but not brave enough to just stick my gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. At least if I go down in a firefight the kid'll have a dead hero for a dad and not a living bastard."  
  
"you don't know that's how you'll turn out, John," Trish insisted. "Isobel's not daft enough to go out with somebody like that."  
  
"My father fooled my mother for a lot longer than ten years, Trish."  
  
"She wasn't getting shot at half the time, though. Besides, if you're still capable of thinking like that then there's something better in you," I replied. "Hey, look at it this way. If you DO turn out to be a bastard then Isobel can kill you long before your sprog feels the need to."  
  
"You know, that's actually sort of reassuring," John replied, brightening a little. However, gloom and pessimism are terribly tenacious. His face, which had lifted somewhat, did that slow crashing thing that glaciers in summer are renowned for. "My mum could have as well, though."  
  
"Whether that's true or not, you're staying here. I'm not fighting alongside anybody wish a death wish like yours; people like that tend not to be only the only ones who get killed," I said severely.  
  
"Now, hang on a minute!" he said furiously. "When was the last time I endangered anybody but me?"  
  
"He's right," Trish conceded. "He's almost always drawn fire AWAY from everybody else, to be honest. If it wasn't John I'd be quite happy about it."  
  
"Well, I for one don't intend to treat him as expendable. You aren't going anywhere, John. I don't want to be the man who explains to Isobel why her child will never know their father. Give me your gun."  
  
"If you want it, you'll have to take it from me," he snarled.  
  
"What are you going to do?" I asked patiently, reasonably. "Shoot your way out and launch a solo assault on the camp? Go out in a blaze of glory?"  
  
"I can think of worse options right now. Look, I need to get out there and do as much damage as I possibly can before I die. Right now, I'd run screaming at a machine gun nest if I thought it'd be useful, but it won't. I'll do anything I possibly can to achieve the objective, and I mean anything."  
  
I weighed my options, and decided that if I left John behind he'd probably end up doing something crazy. At least Sandy and I could keep an eye on him.  
  
"Okay, you win. Get a uniform on."  
  
We drove up to the checkpoint. Sandy played the Arrogant Waffen-SS Officer, whilst I was Prisoner With Important Information. If we could bluff our way into the commandant's tent or command vehicle or whatever, we could hold him and anybody else present at gunpoint- we couldn't afford to allow the commandant to REALLY question me, as I was rather attached to my toenails and devoutly wished for this to remain the case.  
  
Our two tank drivers and a couple of the best of Lord Faa's men slipped away to gain entry to the projector vehicle, equipped with the silenced weapons thoughtfully provided by Owen. The remainder, including John, escorted me to the large tent where Oberst Lucien Rommel was trying very hard to live up to his famous ancestor's well-deserved reputation.  
  
"Not exactly the most challenging task they could have set me," he complained. "These people are no further along than my grandfather's adversaries." I briefly wondered why he was speaking in English.  
  
"I quite agree, colonel. The only serious threat we will be facing is a single aircraft from Target-World Beta equipped with a form of the technology onboard your own JU-857s," a depressingly familiar voice replied seductively.  
  
I'd been more than half expecting Marissa Coulter to turn up here. If I hadn't had the privilege of seeing Asriel being gunned down in the North, just before the final collapse of the Magisterium's forces at their redoubt near the old Experimental Station, I'd have been listening out for him as well. I'd dearly love to know how they got away from that Abyss, but that's something I never got to ask either of them.  
  
"Ah," she said as we entered the tent. "It appears that even that problem is solved. Well done indeed, Oberleutnant...?"  
  
"Dzerhinsky, ma'am; Mikhail Dzerhinsky," Sandy replied, overlaying his English with an accent part German and part Czech, as befitted a native of the mainly German-speaking communities of Czechoslovakia near the border. //You missed your vocation, friend,// I thought admiringly. //You're West End material! Let that bitch-queen from hell [It is the considered opinion of every member of the crew that Arnold Rimmer's maternal issues pale in comparison with mine- Lyra] think you're lapping it up!//  
  
"You think?" I said defiantly. "All four of the others can fly Aurora, and they'll be coming for you. It won't just be my aircraft, either; we managed to shoehorn jump systems into several of the Royal Navy's most potent carrier aircraft, and I can personally vouch for the skill of their pilots."  
  
"Do you think I know nothing of these things?" she laughed. "I have seen the equipment required for such an undertaking. No fighter that was not expressly designed for the purpose can support the technology without losing most of its capabilities."  
  
"More than just a pretty face, I see," I replied smoothly. "But a touch overconfident nevertheless." That was the trigger phrase. The others immediately levelled their weapons at the soldier and the tart. I removed the quick-release knots on the bindings around my wrists and drew my handgun from beneath my flightsuit, which was baggy enough to conceal almost anything.  
  
Rommel Jr began to swear in German, but quietly. He was no fool, even if we'd duped him. "I should have known," he grumbled. "No Aryan would have the same surname as Iron Felix." Felix Dzerhinsky was Stalin's head of internal security and personal hatchet man, played very well by Bob Hoskins in Enemy At The Gates (I think), and a sort of Communist Himmler. Sandy does not like being reminded of this, and had to be restrained from clouting him one with his rifle butt.  
  
"You know your history, if nothing else," I conceded. "Now we are going to leave quietly in a vehicle that some friends of mine are acquiring and there is precisely nothing you can do about it without getting killed in the process, so don't waste your time and energy trying to work out exceedingly clever ways of raising the alarm, because they will be no more than a minor inconvenience to us but will cost you your lives."  
  
"In other words, you're buggered," John replied cheerfully.  
  
"Letting me live will be a mistake that I swear by all that's sacred will cost you your life!" Mrs Coulter said through gritted teeth.  
  
"Oh, I'm not letting you live," I replied. "I just owe Lyra the chance to finish what she started with Asriel, personally. Besides, we don't have the bullets to waste on something like you." There was a general outcry as a vehicle engine started up outside. I heard some shots, and hoarse cries of alarm. "That'll be some friends of ours," I said with a winning smile. "Take note, Colonel; harassing fire from distant snipers can cause as much disruption as an artillery barrage, if not more." I performed a mocking Party salue. "Auf wiedershen!"  
  
The projector vehicle pulled up outside, and we packed inside. It was a converson from an armoured personnel carrier chassis, much as most armies fitted APC bodies out as anti-air or wired guided anti-tank missile platforms. The projector unit was on the roof, operated from within the troop compartment for some reason, and somewhat unexpectedly it included a machine gun mounted coaxially [zeroed to the same crosshair as the primary weapon, typically the gun of a tank]. Presumably this was to provide suppressing fire should there be hostile forces on the other side of the portal. The screen seemed broadly similar to the one on Aurora, usually operated by Mary. I pointed it at a fissure, and a stream of text scrolled along the bottom of the screen with the heading of 'Target Beta'.  
  
"That's home!" I said. "How do I turn this thing on?"  
  
"Button on the left, under the plastic safety cover!" Sandy replied, glancing at the controls and reading the label. He'd warned me that his written German was pretty poor, but I supposed that 'Open Portal' and 'Self-Destruct' wouldn't look much alike, so I took his word for it and pressed the button. Thankfully Sandy was right, and a portal opened in front of us. Our driver -I never found out his name- floored the accelerator, and we lurched forward. I turned the turret around -the joystick in front of the screen was self-explanatory, at least- and fired the coaxial gun at a soldier raising something that bore an ancestral resemblence to the old WWII Panzerfaust anti-armour weapon. He went down.  
  
"We're through! Seal it up!" The implications of the portal staying open didn't register with me at the time. "Button below the activator!" I pressed it, and whatever process that had wedged a fissure open indefinitely reversed itself. The leakage of Dust ceased.  
  
"The damn fools," I said quietly. "Don't they realise, or don't they care?"  
  
"What?" asked John, curiously.  
  
"The static you saw on the screen is dark matter. If too much of it's allowed to pass through one of those barriers, it messes up the Law for the Conservation of Energy, and that'll frazzle the whole fabric of space-time or something; I don't know all the science, but I do know that it won't be good."  
  
"Great; I trust that your own jump drive doesn't do anything like that."  
  
"No, and it should be relatively simple to correct the problem with the right equipment. I can only assume that the Nazis just don't care." We all got out of the vehicle to check the map. We decided to head for the approximate location of the gyptian town, and open another portal there to get back to Aurora. We'd then figure out how best to get the projector system back to our forces. I reckoned that our best bet was to strip the turret and computer systems out, shove them in the back of Aurora and fly home with them, but Sandy recommended calling in a pickup helicopter and shifting the whole thing. There was merit in both ideas, and the compromise that we settled upon was to drive down to the Fens and open a portal so that we could retrieve Aurora and return Lord Faa's men home, then call in a pickup; we doubted that Owen would risk one of his carrier's two heavy lifting choppers this far inland anyway.  
  
"So long as we don't run into any enemy patrols -they'll very much want to know why a vehicle as important as this one is so far from base, and even you can't bluff us out of that, Sandy- we'll be fine. Keep your guns cocked, though, just in case."  
  
Two hours later, we arrived at the right spot and opened a portal. "Oh, shit!"  
  
Another attack was underway. Somebody had got Aurora's dorsal turret going, and was spraying a steady stream of suppressing fire at some unknown target. I yelled at the driver to drive through, swinging the turret around in the hope of doing something to help. The others piled out, weapons at the ready.  
  
We were facing at least eighteen soldiers backed up by a big Infantry Fighting Vehicle, a cross between tank and armoured personnel carrier. I took in the huge 30mm cannon that could cut this thing in half, and the two huge anti-tank missiles. I gave some thought to our own glorified shoulder arm.  
  
"We have a problem."  
  
John was running like hell towards the IFV. What in God's name was he doing? He clambered up the turret, and turned his attention to the missiles. Oh Jesus God he was...  
  
John fired his beloved Browning High-Power handgun into the explosive warhead of the missile. The whole upper body of the IFV was blown apart, and it began to burn. The crew scrambled out just before it blew up completely.  
  
We stood over the burning wreckage, our grief and shock mingling with admiration. "Well, John, you got your wish," Sandy said quietly, his voice quavering. He picked something up; John's gun. He pointed it at the sky and pulled the trigger. It fired! He fired three times more in succession, as slowly as a military guard of honour.  
  
"Isobel should get this," I concluded. "We need to... find what we can to bury and-"  
  
"Ahem," a voice remarked as somebody lifted a large sheet of armour plating off himself. "In the words of Granny Weatherwax, I ain't dead!"  
  
Grubby but indomidable, John reclaimed his sidearm. "Not a conventional tankbusting technique, but quite effective!" he said cheerily, swaying gently.  
  
"Isobel is going to have a bloody fit!" Trish said, half angry and half ecstatic with relief.  
  
"Only if you tell her," I replied pointedly. "I suggest you don't; apoplexy can induce miscarriage." Isobel was also possessed of a temper that made even Elaine duck for cover when she unleashed it, even when not up the stick. The mess that her unborn offspring was making of her hormone levels had done nothing to improve matters.  
  
"Let's just get back, shall we?" Mick suggested.  
  
"Good idea. The sooner we set up for a counter attack the..." John fell backwards, out cold before he hit the ground.  
  
"We'll stick him in one of the bunks and give him a cup of tea when he comes around, and we DON'T tell Isobel. She'll strangle him with her bare hands," I said firmly. "Give me a hand with him, will you?" 


	8. Last Flight Of The Aurora Borealis

A big thank you to my loyal cadre of reviewers, without whom I'd have given up ages ago!  
  
"Well, we can create a magnetic field that will keep Dust away from both sides; it seems that these vehicles carry the requisite gear in the back, but you left it behind," Mary explained to us.  
  
"So that's what those things were," John remarked. "There were four -well, they looked like those transporter pattern enhancers out of Star Trek: The Next Generation- set up in a square pattern and wired up to a generator. If I'd realised I'd have grabbed them."  
  
"No problem, I only need some steel pipes and electrical wire anyway. They must have been basically like big freestanding electromagnets; nothing especially fancy."  
  
We were in a small shore encampment, setting up for an assault on the world now positively identified as our target. There was an air of excitement all about, with aircraft and vehicles parked everywhere and people working on them, and other people shouting importantly at nobody in particular. I felt rather like Luke Skywalker gearing up to blow the Death Star.  
  
Much against my better judgement, Aurora was being fitted with racks for her hardpoints. Four of the six would carry the usual Sidewinders, but the remainder would hold a rack of 500lb gravity bombs, six apiece. I hoped and prayed that the rack would hold; even if the hardpoint mounting stood up to the increased weight at takeoff speed -and that was by no means certain- the whole thing could easily come tearing off if I made a too-sharp turn or accelerated beyond the limits of its tolerance, which was wholly uncertain as this type of bomb rack was intended for the Harrier and had never been tested above a few hundred miles an hour. I'd wanted racks rated for the F22N ground-attack VTOL fighter that was outing the Harrier, which were expected to tolerate exceeding the Mach, but there barely enough to go around for the F22Ns themselves.  
  
I had vetoed any suggestion of uprating the forward guns to the now standard 27mm, as it would have cut the ammunition quantity from a very respectable 4000 rounds per gun to about 800. Conservative as I tried to be with it, the additional reserve of ammunition was something I'd rather got used to. It seemed especially sensible in view of our expected role; we would hit the command centre of the enemy's military whilst other more capable strike aircraft provided direct support for our ground forces.  
  
I'd have been an awful lot happier if I wasn't carrying a bunch of total strangers by way of a crew, with the exception of Elaine. We had a bunch of government scientists manning our various scanning equipment, some of which was entirely unique to Aurora, and three hastily re-roled antiaircraft gunners were manning the turrets. Mary was remaining behind to operate our portal generator, and recently promoted Squadron Leaders Ransom and Silverton would be flying in their own aircraft.  
  
There was a low roar of turbines, and a pair of battered looking Soviet-era military transports made very bad landings in nearby fields. Crowds of rather bedraggled adolescents and young people emerged clutching a variety of weapons that were almost all older than they were. A girl with dark hair scraped back into a tight ponytail and an air of command was bellowing at them in Russian. They began mandandling an old UH-1 'Huey' out of one transport. It was weighed down with missiles hanging off the wings, and what appeared to be a turret from the Cobra gunship was fitted beneath the fuselage.  
  
"John," I said with a rueful expression, "this has an unmistakeable air of you about it. Something you feel you ought to be telling me?"  
  
"The Huey's left over from our time in the States, and the heavily armed Russians are some friends we made not long after." John headed for where they were setting up. "Glad you could make it, Anya!"  
  
I groaned inwardly. I remembered this one from the papers. Having escaped across the Bering Strait in the aforementioned Huey [and one other subsequently lost in battle], the Young Guns and their friends from the business with that death row in Louisiana -a group of former 101st Airborne infantrymen and a couple of Vietnam-vet pilots- had wound up in combat once again, this time against a child-kidnap ring operating in central Moscow. This had ended in an all out gunfight against renegade elements of the Russian Army, with the eventual assistance of government-loyal units being all that saved them from certain death. The Young Guns are now national heroes in Russia, I should add.  
  
Owen Richards, who seemed to be in charge by default, welcomed the reinforcements. "We'll need all the help we can get. Now if we can just get those C-17s down around here..." He'd somehow talked the people at a nearby US airbase to loan him some Globemaster III airlifters [very much later we learned that he had done so by threatening to bombard the airfield with heavy artillery if they didn't cooperate- apparently MoD sanctions this in time of national emergency], and we were trying to clear a landing site.  
  
"Will they take a Challenger?" I wondered aloud. Britain's main battle tank was somewhat wider than the Abrahms, and a good bit heavier.  
  
"Transport Command says so; they've bought fifty. Thank God these things can operate from unimproved runways!" I nodded; we would have to pick a field and set down, possibly under fire. This wasn't going to be easy.  
  
Three hours later, we were setting up camp inside the German border. Everybody was running around setting things up, and I felt rather lost in the middle of it all. I sat on the sandbag perimeter wall, smoking and brooding.  
  
"Any chance of one of them?" Elaine asked. I offered the pack, and pulled out my lighter. "Thanks. Wish they'd given me a fighter; I could do so much more good."  
  
"They wanted you flying Aurora and me in one of the F22s, but I'm not qualified in them, and quite frankly I'm too used to the Borealis. To be honest with you, I'm getting too old for this stuff."  
  
"Me too. It used to be fun, you know. Sort of Flight of the Old Dog meets Airwolf, all that high-tech clandestine stuff."  
  
"Aha!" I said. "So it wasn't just Will who kept nicking my technothrillers, then. Yeah, I used to love it as well. I think this'll be the last time we take her into battle, and that's just fine with me. After this, I'm going to find us a nice little house in the Lake District or someplace, and God willing we'll never have to fire a shot in anger again."  
  
"Sounds great. You seen Will anywhere?" I shook my head. "Shame. At times like this he needs a bit of morale-boosting from his dad."  
  
I looked at her askance. "His dad's dead, Ellie. I can never take John's place."  
  
"You have, David. John couldn't have done a better job of raising Will than you. You've been there every step of the way; you've taken him to football matches, taken him paintballing, been to Parents Evenings with him and a million other things. He's your son, Dave, in all but name."  
  
"Thanks," I said quietly.  
  
We came upon Will sitting under the wing of his fighter, throwing and catching his knife. I winced as it turned three times in the air and landed point downwards in the turf about a centimetre from his foot, but he didn't seem to notice. Lyra wandered over, smoking what appeared to be a cigar.  
  
"Hi, Starbuck," Elaine quipped, beating us both to it. "Should you be smoking right now?"  
  
"Well, I'm about to go into combat against the most dangerous enemy we've ever faced. It's hardly the biggest hazard to my health right now, is it?"  
  
"That wasn't quite what I meant," Elaine admitted. "Mary denies all knowledge of the pregnancy test kit that hit me on the head this morning, and I'm damn sure it isn't mine, so by process of elimination that leaves you."  
  
"Oh, I thought somebody'd moved it," she replied, looking quite unfazed. "I didn't want to worry all of you before we set off, but yes, I'm pregnant."  
  
The tannoy boomed. "All aircraft to ready state, repeat, all aircraft to ready state!" Lyra bolted, leaving the rest of us staring at each other.  
  
"NOW she tells me?" Will said disbelievingly.  
  
"Can we worry about this later, please? Let's go kick some righteous arse!" Elaine said in her usual gung-ho manner. Will and I shrugged, and headed for out planes.  
  
"All right, we all know what to do. Red Leader and his wingman cover Alpha Bravo as they hit the military command centre in Berlin, whilst the rest of us shoot up their frontline units and HOPEFULLY provide a distraction. All set, Unicorn Halo?"  
  
"Ready to go, Blue Leader," Mitchel Ashley's Midwestern tones reported over the steady thrumming of the Huey's engines. "The insertion team's rarin' to go."  
  
"Good, just keep an eye on John; he hasn't quite got over his kamikaze tendencies yet!"  
  
"Will do. Now let's go blow shit up!"  
  
"Now there's a battle cry to be reckoned with!" I remarked. "Here we go, then..."  
  
The trio of planes peeled off and headed for the rotten heart of the Reich, ready to tear it out at the roots once and for all.  
  
"There's the seat of government," I said quietly. "Party headquarters. So, which part do I bomb first?"  
  
"The middle's a good place to start. We'll handle the fighters," Will replied. "Anya's little mob ought to be arriving just about..." A dozen assorted helicopters appeared on the horizon and began dropping troops, and I could plainly see several 'technicals' roaring through the streets. "...Now. Yeah, go get 'em, comrades!"  
  
"Right, I'm going in," I said, lining up the bombsights. "Three, two, one... bombs away!" Two 500lb bombs slammed into the main administrative building of the Reich, which blew apart in a cloud of dust and flying halfbricks. "Splash one party headquarters. Now for a certain building in Prinz Albrechtstrasse." I made a similar run at Gestapo headquarters and flattened it. "Interrogate that, you bastards!" I laughed.  
  
"This isn't supposed to be fun," Will observed.  
  
"Oh, let an old warrior enjoy his last throw of the dice!" I shouted back, getting a little carried away by it all.  
  
"I worry about you sometimes, Dad," he said to himself, not realising the mike had picked it up. Elaine and I exchanged glances, but said nothing.  
  
I released my remaining bombs, levelling several important National Socialist monuments, and turned to the close support role. Will and Jack were busily taking on the fighters redirected to deal with us, and having some success. I saw a familiar figure standing on top of the Triumphal Arch, which I hadn't blown up as it was a monument to the war dead from 1918 to 1945, and dipped my wings in greeting. John did a Che Guevara with his rifle in response.  
  
"This is Blue Leader," Lyra yelled over the radio. "Heavy counter attack in progress, and we're being forced back. We need all the help we can get right now."  
  
"I'm low on fuel and ammunition, but I'll do what I can," I replied. "Alpha Bravo inbound."  
  
"Archangel Team copies, we are on our way," a girl's Russian-accented voice added.  
  
Will was already a dot on the horizon, afterburners blaring into the night sky. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, and followed suit.  
  
Lyra snap-rolled as a surface to air missile zipped under her left wing. She was immensely relieved to see three more friendly blips appear on her scope. The familiar silver shape of the Aurora Borealis dived headlong at a tank and blasted it with two well-placed Hydra rockets, and then turned against a unit of mechanised infantry. "Say hello to my little friend!" I yelled in a very bad Italian-American accent, letting fly with my guns.  
  
"All fighter and surface to air units," a chillingly familiar voice said over the radio, apparently broadcasting in clear on our frequency. "The silver amphibian is your priority target."  
  
"Most ladylike to hold grudges, Mrs Coulter," I observed smoothly. "Lizzie, shut that tart up, will you?"  
  
"Happily," she replied. "Come on, where are you, you stuck up little bitch? Come out and take us on for yourself!"  
  
"Now, is that any way to speak to your mother?"  
  
A weird-looking vehicle straight out of a bad TV adaption of one of Jules Verne's more esoteric works hovered above the battlefield. It appeared to be made largely out of brass pipes, and had no visible means of propulsion. As I watched, a bolt of lightning shot out from it and punched a football-sized hole in the Typhoon's delta wing. Lyra swore, and wrestled her plane back under control.  
  
"Not bad, not bad, I'm almost impressed. Now 'ave some of this!" she yelled in broadest Oxfordshire, letting fly with her guns. The Intention Craft dodged nimbly, only to fly into my line of fire. I took full advantage, and gave her a burst of cannon fire with a few rockets for good measure. Still the wretched thing darted out of the way, and zapped Aurora. The ultra-tough manganese-titanium alloy soaked it up with no more damage than some slight charring.  
  
"That the best you can do?" I laughed.  
  
"Oh, of course not!" Will's fighter suddenly went into a steep dive, and he barely ejected before it smashed into the ground. I heard Lyra scream.  
  
"Not so tough without your boyfriend, are you Lyra?" Lady Marissa said contemptuously, taking her craft into a portal.  
  
"Right, that DOES it!" I grated. "Stay right on my tail, Lizzie; if anybody's good enough to follow us into a portal it's you. Where'd she go?"  
  
"Back to our world," our sensor officer replied. I nodded in response.  
  
"I'm on your six, Dave. Let's finish this!"  
  
Mrs Coulter smiled grimly. //Wonder if they'll accept a female Fuhrer? 'Never be afraid to exploit a power vaccuum' was Edward's motto, and the old bastard made quite a name for himself that way so there must be something in it.// She set her sights on the small encampment from which the forces of good had deployed. "Aha. As good a place to target as any, I- Oh, not them again!"  
  
"You don't get off that easy, Coulter!" I snarled. Screaming wordless defiance, Lyra slammed her aircraft's throttles forward all the way and poured hot lead at the Intention Craft, then came roaring around to loose all her Sidewinders at once. I followed suit, feeling a surge of savage triumph.  
  
A sudden yell of alarm from one of the gun crews had me swerving upwards to avoid the four enemy fighters that had just jumped in. I pulled Aurora around to take them head on, and one of them fired a burst from its twin guns. The double stream of gunfire tore apart the right-hand engine and pierced the protective mesh over the windscreen. I barely registered a yell of pain and surprise from beside me, but concentrated on wrestling to keep Aurora in the air. A second burst that destroyed the already fatally weakened join between wing and fuselage settled that.  
  
"Eject! Eject! Eject!" BLAM! The roof tore away. There was a whoosh and a sense of shooting violently upwards, and then it all went black. I guess I'd been hit in the back of the head by something, but I'm not sure what.  
  
The top gunner's turret exploded in a shower of glass as his seat rocketed upwards. The rear gunner's did much the same, but his propellant motors were set at a thirty degree angle to avoid the tail fin. The dorsal gunner shot upwards through a blowout panel in the roof above him. The cockpit crew all left in a more or less conventional ejection manner, and drifted down beneath their canopies.  
  
Elaine was already dead, as a thirty millimetre shell tipped with depleted uranium had bored straight through her chest and left a hole that the post-mortem doctor could put his arm through.  
  
I landed heavily, my ears still ringing from the blast of the roof separating. I saw a temendous fireball as Aurora hit the ground, flattening a large part of Northampton's Wellingborough Road, the closest thing the city could claim as a red-light district. John never forgave me for wiping out the best kebab shop in the county.  
  
Cursing silently, I fought my way free of my parachute and drew my pistol. If that Coulter bitch showed up to gloat she'd get the whole clip right between the tits for this! My toe came into contact with a metal rail, and I glanced down. It occurred to me that the ground was vibrating, which was a bad thing on a railway line. I glanced behind me, and saw the 21:07 to Peterborough approaching at ninety miles an hour.  
  
"Oh, BOLLOCKS." THUD! I'll spare you the precise details, but suffice it to say that a body bag was not necessary. A binliner did the job perfectly.  
  
***  
  
The somewhat dented Intention Craft set down near the centre of town. Mrs Coulter alighted with a triumphant air, and stuck a cigarette in an elegant holder.  
  
"Don't celebrate yet," Will said coldly. She looked up sharply.  
  
Will and Lyra stood side by side, holding SA80A3 assault rifles borrowed for the occasion. The Young Guns, Anya and several of her colleagues flanked them, along with some of the 101st veterans they'd worked with previously.  
  
"So," John said perkily, "are you going to face due process of law, or give my friends here an excuse to satisfy their incredibly strong desire to blow your head off?"  
  
"I think I'd prefer the first option," she concluded. Will smiled faintly, but his eyes blazed with sheer fury. The two dozen men and women exchanged looks. "Well, tough shit," Lyra said at last.  
  
Every weapon that could be was set on full automatic, and every weapon fired until it was empty. Lyra nudged a cartridge case aside with her foot, and lowered her weapon. "It's done," she said at length. "Come on, let's get out of here."  
  
They returned to the base camp to find decidedly mixed feelings. Several survivors were loudly and drunkenly celebrating victory, whilst others were sitting alone or in little groups, mourning the dead. Mary was among the latter.  
  
"Dave and Elaine are both dead," she said flatly, her voice sounding drained and far away. "She was hit by cannon fire in the air, he made it to the ground but was hit by a goddam fucking TRAIN!" her voice rose in hysteria to a scream. "That's just not FAIR!"  
  
Will stood as if he had been turned to stone. He hadn't been surprised; he'd got back to this world just in time to see Aurora go down. He stood there for a long while, assimilating the news. "We got her for you, Mum... and Dad," he said under his breath. "I think we've done what we were expectd to do. There's nothing in the way of the Republic of Heaven now. Rest in peace; you've earned it. Everybody who died today has." He grabbed a large multipack of beer from the back of a truck, broke it open and tossed cans to everybody, then cracked one open for himself.  
  
"Well," he said as he raised it in salute, "here's to the ones who didn't come back."  
  
He blinked, and suddenly realised that there was a bright light growing before him. The others stared in bewilderment, as Xanthania appeared before them, with three lesser figures behind her. "Greetings, my children," she said in her most majestic tone of voice.  
  
"Hi," I added. Elaine and John waved casually.  
  
"Mum? Dad? Dave?"  
  
"We convinced a mate of yours to let us stop by just before we went," I explained. "Oh, please tell me you aren't drinking to our memory with Castlemaine!"  
  
"Only thing handy," he explained. "I think they've been looting the brewery up the road." Consider this next time you buy any variety of 'Australian' beer: It's brewed in Northampton, at the Carlsberg place opposite Toys R Us.  
  
"Well, it's nice to have caught you before we have to go," Elaine said. "Tell Johnny he'll be a great dad, and I reckon the same goes for you."  
  
"Just do what Dave did!" John Parry added. "If you do half as well as him you'll be as good as any father could hope to be. Good luck, kid."  
  
Elaine put an arm around each of her men friends, and steered us towards the glowing sphere of light. "Come on, it's going to be quite a walk."  
  
"Can't I even have a quick beer?"  
  
"NO. You're dead, remember Dave?"  
  
"So?"  
  
"Oh, just shut up and walk!"  
  
"Was she like this with you, John, or is it just me?"  
  
"Oh, me too..."  
  
With that, the three of them vanished into the world of the dead.  
  
"The Republic of Heaven is founded, my children," Xanthania continued. "Your task is complete. I wish you peace and happiness for all your days!" With a dramatic flash of light, she vanished.  
  
Will turned to Lyra. "Is this a bad time to ask you to marry me?" he said hopefully.  
  
"Not at all. In fact," she said with a radiant smile, "it's the best suggestion I've heard all day!" Amid the raucous congratulations of the others, they fell into each others arms and kissed like they never wanted to stop.  
  
There remains little more to tell. Will and Lyra married in circumstances of great celebration a year after the war ended. John and Isobel followed suit a few months later. Will continues in active service with Fleet Air Arm, whilst Lyra is now an instructor. They were both awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for their actions against the Reich, with Dave and Elaine recieving posthumous George Crosses. The Young Guns are now living in Russia, and are reputedly helping people subvert the UK's draconian immigration laws. They still occupy the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.  
  
The Malone Drive is now fitted to some aircraft, but derivatives of the Reich system are more widely adopted for purposes of communication between worlds. Diplomatic relations between two or three worlds have been established, and it is likely that this will be expanded in the near future. Where this will lead is anybody's guess.  
  
Jack did finally succeed in getting off with his navigator.  
  
THE END  
  
The following is a teaser for the final episode in this trilogy, title undecided (ideas welcome):  
  
The two of them found themselves standing in the middle of a circle of witches, somewhere in the Arctic. Their daemons were visible, so this was Lyra's world.  
  
Will drew his pistol. If Serafina wanted to talk to them, he reasoned, she'd come and visit. Kidnapping wasn't her style, unless for some reason she couldn't travel, in which case things were VERY bad indeed...  
  
The large number of bows levelled at them suggested another explanation that hadn't previously occurred to him. These witches were in league with one of the many organisations, individuals and occasional supernatural entities that Lyra and himself had pissed off at one stage or another.  
  
Lyra had her own weapon drawn, but saw that it was hopeless. Frustrated, she tossed the pistol away. Will followed suit.  
  
"What do you want?" he demanded.  
  
The witches parted to reveal a man in gleaming white robes. He looked thirtyish, and was handsome in a harsh, cruel sort of way. He grinned like a lizard.  
  
"Welcome," he said in what was suppposed to be a friendly way. "I don't believe we ever met face to face, but you certainly caused me a great deal of inconvenience. I was just about to be promoted via dead men's shoes through the unwitting auspices of your late father, Ms Silvertongue, when you and your companion succeeded in messing things up royally. As you can well imagine, I take a dim view of this." Metatron paused for effect. If he was hoping them to clutch at each other fearfully then he was disappointed. Man, woman, cat and pine marten looked at each other. "Shit," they chorused.  
  
"So what are you going to do now?" Lyra said pleasantly. "Explain your devious plan to rule the universe before putting us in a situation from which we will have to escape by some improbable means? After all, you've been sticking religiously -pardon the expression- to the James Bond villan cliche thus far."  
  
Metatron permitted himself a tight little smile. "You are showing considerable bravery for somebody whom I can have killed with a mere word of command. You are quite wrong, in fact. I was rather hoping to enlist your aid, as it happens."  
  
"To do what, rule SEVERAL universes? I'd love to know how you intend to convince us to have anything to do with THAT!" Will said derisively. "Do tell, please."  
  
"By offering you absolute control of your respective worlds, and returning your parents from the world of the dead. Also by taking your children hostage if you turned down the first offer. Interested yet?" He paused, smiling that tight little smile that both Will and Lyra dearly wished to punch. 


End file.
